SMCC Holiday Closure and Top Five Science Stories of 2013 | December 20, 2013
The Science Media Centre of Canada will be closed for the holidays from Monday, December 23, 2013 until Friday, January 3, 2014 inclusive.
If there is a major breaking news story during these two weeks, we will send out news alerts or expert comments as appropriate. If you need to get in touch with us, you can call 613-249-8209.
To tide you over in the meantime, we’ve gone through our Heads Up alerts from the past year to give you our picks for “Top Five Canadian Science Stories of 2013.” Enjoy, and have a safe and happy holiday.
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1. The Chelyabinsk Meteorite
On February 15, 2013 a space rock nearly the size of a semi-trailer truck streaked through the sky above Chelyabinsk, Russia. Its journey through the atmosphere was caught by security and dashboard cameras, as seen in numerous YouTube compilations. At some point it burst into pieces, sending out a shock wave that injured thousands of people and shattered window for miles.
In July 2013, the international Meteoritical Society held its annual meeting in Edmonton, Alberta. The event featured a special session on the Chelyabinsk meteorite, including a presentation from Canadian researchers who had analysed one of the fragments with x-rays. In November 2013, two papers about the meteorite were published in Nature, both by international teams that included Western University meteorite specialist Peter Brown. The first paper pegged the force of the explosion at the equivalent of 500 kilotons of TNT and suggested that such events may be more common than current models predict. The second paper analysed video records to reconstruct the trajectory of the rock, and suggested it may have been a piece that broke off of an asteroid known as 86039 (1999 NC43).
2. Curiosity’s findings
It was in 2012 that Mars Science Laboratory – known as Curiosity – landed in the Gale Crater, but the findings slowly trickling back from the largest-ever planetary rover made 2013 a big year for Mars exploration. In late September a suite of five papers published in Science summarized the results from two important sites: Jake_M, a lone rock that appeared to be igneous (from magma) in origin, and Rocknest, a site that contained wind-blown sand, silt and dust. Analysis from Curiosity’s instruments – including the Canadian-built Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrophotometer – showed that Jake_M was similar to those rocks which on Earth form near ocean islands and rift zones, while the soil from Rocknest was between 1.5 to 3 per cent water.
In December, another paper in Science announced that the area of the Gale Crater known as Yellowknife Bay is likely an ancient lake bed, formed 3.6 billion years ago. The team, which included researchers from Guelph University, Brock University and the Canadian Space Agency, said that the lake may have lasted for tens to hundreds of thousands of years and contained many elements critical for life, such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, sulfur, nitrogen and phosphorous. On earth, such conditions are ideal for microbes called chemolithoautotrophs that are able to digest minerals for energy.
3. The Big Brain
In June 2013, an international team including researchers from Canada’s National Research Council and the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill University published a paper in Science outlining their ultrahigh-resolution three-dimensional (3D) model of a human brain. The model, called BigBrain, was made by meticulously scanning 7404 slices of a brain donated by a 65-year-old woman, and can resolve features that are only 20 micrometres apart; roughly on the level of individual cells. The model is available for free and will allow scientists to study the human brain with a degree of accuracy and depth never before experienced. This could lead to better understanding of all sorts of mental disorders, from schizophrenia to depression.
4. High Arctic Camel
In March 2013, a team from the Canadian Museum of Nature and Dalhousie University discovered some unusual bone fragments in an paleological dig on Ellesmere island. Put together, they indicated a large femur from a cloven-hoofed animal from the Pliocene Epoch, about 3.5 million years ago. Colleagues at the University of Manchester analysed traces of collagen stuck to the bone, and confirmed that the animal was a giant camel, the first ever found in the Arctic. The Science Media Centre of Canada organized a webinar with the principal investigators ahead of the publication of their paper in Nature Communications. An online video produced by the Canadian Museum of Nature also tells the story.
5. Treacherous white cells
In July 2013, a team led by McGill researchers, Jonathan Cools-Lartigue and Jonathan Spicer, discovered that that white blood cells have a previously unknown dark side. While it’s commonly known that white blood cells in the human body are like the defending white knights of the immune system, they found white blood cells help cancer cells in activating and facilitating their spread into tumours. Theirs findings published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation could mean that medications that deal with white blood cells that are used for non-cancer diseases could be used in the future to prevent this mechanism of cancer spread.
Honourable mention – The Year of Chris Hadfield
There’s no denying that 2013 was a banner year for Sarnia Ontario’s own starman, Chris Hadfield. The 54-year old Canadian astronaut captured the imagination of millions with his stunning pictures of Earth posted to Twitter, his hit recording with the Barenaked Ladies, and his popular new book. After undergoing medical tests at the University of Waterloo in order to better understand the effects of space flight on the human body, Hadfield announced that he will be accept a post at the university, cross-appointed to the Faculty of Science, Faculty of Environment and the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences. While 2014 promises to be a quieter year than this one, Hadfield will no doubt continue to inspire Canadians to learn more about the exciting science that shapes our world.
