Author: Monique Conrod

News

Charity Gives Money Directly To World’s Poorest People

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What would you do with a thousand dollars? You can probably think of a lot of fun ways to spend that much money.

But what if your family didn’t always have enough to eat? Or what if you lived in a house with a dirt floor and a thatched roof? A thousand dollars could change your life.

That’s the idea behind a charity called GiveDirectly, which puts money in the hands of poor people and lets them spend it however they choose.

GiveDirectly was founded in 2008 by four American university students. Paul Niehaus, Michael Faye, Rohit Wanchoo and Jeremy Shapiro were studying economics in the developing world. They wanted to find the best way to help the poorest people.

Traditional charities work by raising money from donors and spending it where they think it can do the most good. Charities often support major projects like building schools, hospitals, roads, wells and irrigation pipes, or providing medical care for people in need.

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Environment Science

Pollution Shuts Down Chinese City

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The air pollution was so bad in Harbin, in China, on October 21 that the city was forced to close roads and schools, and to cancel hundreds of flights from its airport.

News reports said the smog (a mixture of smoke and fog) was so thick that people couldn’t see more than 10 or 20 metres in front of them.

According to unofficial reports, people could not even see the person standing next to them.

The city’s website said: “You can’t see your own fingers in front of you.”

Residents said there was a “burning” smell in the air.

Many people covered their noses and mouths with scarves or masks.

The pollution was blamed on several factors.

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News Science

Students Win Prize For Making ‘Power Flour’ from Insects

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A team of business students from McGill University in Montreal have won $1-million for developing a nutritious, low-cost food made from insects.

Their new “power flour” will help feed poor people around the world.

Every year, the Hult Prize Foundation holds a contest for college and university students. They challenge the students to find ways to help solve social or environmental problems by developing new products or new businesses.

The prize was awarded on September 23 in New York City by former U.S. president Bill Clinton. Clinton chose the theme of world hunger for this year’s contest.

Ahmad Ashkar, the founder of the Hult Prize, said almost a billion people go hungry every day.

The winning team, which calls itself Aspire Food Group, developed a plan for adding dried and ground-up insects to flour to make it more nutritious.

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News

Radio-Canada Flip-Flops On Name Change

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Radio-Canada, the French-language branch of the CBC, announced on June 5 that it was changing its name to “ICI”.

So many people objected to the change, however, that on June 10 the president of the CBC said the broadcaster would keep the name Radio-Canada after all.

The organization uses the tagline “Ici Radio-Canada” on its TV and radio news stories. It wanted to “rebrand” itself with a name that could be used for all of its services – television, radio, satellite and website – so it planned to drop “Radio-Canada” from its name and be known simply as “ICI.”

But many Canadians were very upset about the name change. They objected to removing the word “Canada” from the name because the organization is part of Canada’s heritage, and because it is paid for with money from Canadian taxpayers.

CBC/Radio-Canada was created by the government in 1936 to be Canada’s national public broadcaster. The organization gets most of the money it needs to operate – about 60 per cent, or $1-billion a year – from the government.

Its official purpose is to provide programming that is “predominantly and distinctively Canadian,” and to “contribute to shared national consciousness and identity.”

Federal Heritage Minister James Moore, who is in charge of giving money to CBC/Radio-Canada, also opposed to new name. He said taxpayers would only be willing to pay for the broadcaster if it was Canadian in content and in name.

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Kids News

Different Toys For Girls And Boys?

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Four-year-old Gavin Pope of Garfield, New Jersey, loves to cook.

But when his family decided to buy him an Easy-Bake Oven, they found that the colour and packaging made it look like a “girls only” toy.

The Easy-Bake Oven and its box are purple.

The packaging and advertising show only girls baking with it.

So McKenna Pope, Gavin’s 13-year-old sister, started an Internet campaign for a gender-neutral oven.

More than 54,000 people signed the petition.

Hasbro executives met with McKenna and told her they planned to introduce a black, silver and blue oven next fall.

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Sports

Hockey Canada Bans Bodychecking For Peewee Players

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Hockey Canada – the organization that sets the rules for amateur hockey leagues in Canada – has voted to eliminate bodychecking for peewee players across the country.

The ban will start in September 2013.

One of the main reasons for the ban is safety, says Paul Carson, vice-president of hockey development for Hockey Canada.

Last year, researchers at the University of Calgary found that young players are three times more likely to be injured in leagues where bodychecking is allowed than in leagues with no bodychecking.

The study showed that peewee players in Alberta, where bodychecking was allowed, suffered 209 injuries and 73 concussions.

In Quebec, where bodychecking is not allowed, there were 70 injuries and 20 concussions.

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Animals Science

New Species Of Dinosaur Found In Alberta

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A dome-headed dinosaur skull found in southern Alberta is helping scientists rethink some of their ideas about dinosaurs.

The skull was found in 2008 by a team of scientists led by Dr. David Evans of the Royal Ontario Museum.

The skull is about 85 million years old.

The top of the skull is made of a dome-shaped mass of solid bone about 10 centimetres thick.

This means the dinosaur belonged to a group of dinosaurs called pachycephalosaurs (“thick-headed lizards”).

The scientists compared the skull to all of the known pachycephalosaur specimens in the world – about 600 of them.

They learned that there are 16 different species within that group, and the skull discovered in Alberta belongs to a species that has never been seen before.

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Health Science

Calgary Student Wins National Science Prize For Cancer Therapy Research

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

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

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

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

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Animals Science

Camel Fossils Found In Canada’s Arctic

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

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

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

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

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Health

Toronto Kids Need More Exercise

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

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

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

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

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

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