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The painted brain: how our lives colour our minds

Posted by Hannah

The brain arrives shortly after lunch. It rests on the lab bench, in a Styrofoam box plastered with “Urgent Delivery” and “Fragile” stickers, while two research assistants prepare the dissection laboratory. One has tuned a small radio to a classical station. The sounds of bassoons and strings waft into the room. The opus is an allegro – upbeat and quick. The technicians glide around the room with practised coordination. They are cloaked in knee-length blue plastic aprons, sleeves tucked into latex gloves. They tape absorbent mats to the bench tops and lay out scalpels and forceps. Josée Prud’homme adjusts her … Read more…

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Banking on biodiversity

Posted by Hannah

The diversity of life on Earth gives ecosystems the resilience they need to thrive. Yet every day scores of plants and animals go extinct, victims of activities we humans undertake to feed, clothe, house and trans­port ourselves. How can we meet our own needs without destroying that which sustains us? The west coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada, has a rugged, involuted shoreline, etched by fjords, sand dunes and shel­tered coves. It is sandwiched between two biospheres, the dark swelling sea and the emerald temperate rain forest, and it attracts all sorts—from salmon to surfers. As idyllic as … Read more…

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Few bats for Quebec’s belfries. White-nose syndrome killing North American bats.

Posted by Hannah

Photograph by: Nancy Heaslip, New York Department of Environmental Conservation MONTREAL – In March, Frédérick Lelièvre found himself crawling through a narrow passage into the final chamber of the Laflèche Cave in Val des Monts. Raising his eyes to the hibernating bats on the rock above him, his heart dropped. The tiny lime-size animals were dusted with a white powdery substance. Most of them had it on their muzzles, and it was on the wings and the feet of others. It wasn’t a good sign. Wildlife biologists in the United States have come across similar sights over the last four … Read more…