Quirks & Quarks for March 18, 2000
Real Audio sound files: Listen in realtime, or
download.
Profile: Dr. Irene Uchida
Dr. Irene Uchida is a pioneer in human genetics. Not only is she on the cutting edge of her field, but when she started out, she was a woman working in a man's world of science. She didn't let that stop her, luckily, as her work has helped many people. Dr. Uchida's work focuses on the abnormalities in chromosomes which cause severe birth defects like Down syndrome and trisomy eighteen.
Kathryn O'Hara, a freelance science journalist, brought us Dr. Uchida's story.
It's part of Ms. O'Hara's continuing series on eminent Canadian scientists.
New roots for the family tree
The human family tree is pretty patchy. Some branches seem to lead to nowhere, while others float in space without attatching to the trunk. A recent discovery might mean some of these holes will be filled in.
Researchers from the University of Northern Illinois discovered the remains of a primitive antrhopoid -- a kind of tiny, ancient proto-monkey they think is on the evolutionary path to humans. Dr. Daniel Gebo, professor of anthropology at the university of Northern Illinois discovered the animal, dubbed Eosimias.
Illustration courtesy of Carnagie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh.
Listeners talk back: GMOs
Two weeks ago we had a report from an international conference on the safety, benefits and risks of genetically modified foods - or GMOs. In that report, we heard from a variety of scientists, activists and policy makers from around the world - then we heard from you!
This week we bring you a sampling of that feedback.
Genetics Column: paternal mitochondrial DNA
Our regular genetics columnist Dr. Vanessa Auld, joined us to share a new discovery from a group of English researchers. They have found that one of the methods commonly used to track the path of human evolution has a major problem.
Robot ants
Ants have a complex social structure and always seem to be working very hard. When you watch them moving in their orderly way, it almost seems as if they were...robots.
Dr. Ronald Kube noticed the similarity and is using ant behaviour as a model for robot design. Dr. Kube is a former robotics expert at the University of Alberta and now a Senior Research Scientist with Syncrude - an Alberta oil sands company.
Question of the week: Musical possibilities
One listener was puzzled by the combination of musical notes that make up tunes. She wondered that since there are a finite number of notes, and a finite number of combinations to use...does that mean we will eventually run out of "note combinations" to create new music?
We asked Dr. Peter Rosenthal in the mathematics department at the Universtity of Toronto to compose an answer to this musical query.
[Last Week]
[Next Week]
[Archives]
[QuirksHome]
[quirks@toronto.cbc.ca]