Media Room

afterGRAD: Grad Studies

EXTRACT: afterGRAD: Grad Studies The second part of a three part miniseries about life after an undergraduate degree Undergraduate students just get a taste of academia. They dabble in different subjects and specializations, getting a bit from everything. But for those who are looking for more in-depth study and research, graduate ...

Growth Spurt at a Bolivian Volcano Is Fertile Ground for Study

EXTRACT: Growth Spurt at a Bolivian Volcano Is Fertile Ground for Study By JEAN FRIEDMAN-RUDOVSKY UTURUNCU VOLCANO, Bolivia — The broad hill at the base of Uturuncu is unassuming. Its gentle arc fades naturally into the Andean landscape. But the 43-mile-long stretch of rocky soil is now an object of international scientific fascination. Satellite ...

Sim City meets academia in U of A's new community planning program

EXTRACT: Sim City meets academia in U of A's new community planning program Jonathan Faerber; Gateway Staff; Feb 08, 2012 If you've ever survived a lecture by playing Sim City, it might be worth your while to pay attention to the latest development in the University of Alberta academic scene: community planning. The ...

Staples: A giant step to improve Edmonton's livability

EXTRACT: EDMONTON - Edmonton should be a more sensible city in the near future, a place where, for instance, all new subdivisions will be designed to work in a part of the world that has abundant snowfall as opposed to abundant palm trees. This new version of Edmonton will insist that neighbourhoods ...

Finding bitumen

EXTRACT: (Edmonton) A University of Alberta geologist is hoping a one-of-a-kind imaging system will satisfy two needs of oilsands producers: to find more energy and to return mining sites to a natural state. Benoit Rivard, a researcher with the U of A’s Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, is adapting the new Finnish-made device ...

Diamond Mind

EXTRACT: Graham Pearson, the U of A’s foremost expert in diamond research, uses unique "fingerprints" to determine the origins of the world’s favourite gemstone Have you ever wondered how diamonds were formed or where they come from? Do you know what types of minerals are located in Canada’s Arctic region and ...

U of A responds to community

EXTRACT: U of A responds to community By Michael Davies-VennJanuary 20, 2012 (Edmonton) Economic development in Alberta has received a boost from the University of Alberta, with a new community planning program that will help to fill a critical need in the province, while building a better future for Albertans, says Robert J. ...

Scientists confirm rocks fell from Mars

EXTRACT: Scientists confirm rocks fell from Mars By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer – 23 hours ago WASHINGTON (AP) — They came from Mars, not in peace, but in pieces. Scientists are confirming that 15 pounds of rock collected recently in Morocco fell to Earth from Mars during a meteorite shower last ...

Keeping pace in the race to the field

EXTRACT: Field research is a complex undertaking these days. In addition to worrying about details of the research itself, there is an ever-increasing mountain of red tape to wade through before even starting the journey. The hurdles include University of Alberta and Transport Canada vehicle policies, provincial government “working alone” and occupational ...

What I know About ... Winter Weather

EXTRACT: Winter Weather Expert: Gerhard Reuter Everything you wanted to know about winter weather but were shivering too much to ask Who: Gerhard Reuter Age: 55 Experience: It sounds like science fiction, but he can change the weather. He’s actually been involved in crews that have flown through clouds in South Africa and seeded ...

Top 100 Stories of 2011 #77: Amber Reveals Origins of Feathers?

EXTRACT: “That’s got to be a hair,” University of Alberta paleobiologist Alex Wolfe thought when he saw a thin strand in a piece of 80-million-year-old amber. But a look through a microscope revealed the sheen and ringed appearance found only in true feathers. Wolfe and colleagues then combed through 150,000 pieces ...

A rock garden landscape for student learning on campus

EXTRACT: A rock garden landscape for student learning on campus Rachel Singer Gateway Staff Nov 30, 2011 The University of Alberta’s earth and atmospheric sciences department is in the middle of installing the second phase of the new geosciences rock garden located outside Biological Sciences. “The concept of the geosciences garden is to teach students within ...

Who or what takes the blame?

EXTRACT: Who or what takes the blame? By News StaffNovember 4, 2011 Late Pleistocene steppe bison skull recovered from a gold mining site in Klondike area Yukon. This skull dates to about 30,000 years before present. (Photo by D. Froese) (Edmonton) For decades researchers have tried to pinpoint the cause of the massive loss ...

Species-specific responses of Late Quaternary megafauna to climate and humans

EXTRACT: Despite decades of research, the roles of climate and humans in driving the dramatic extinctions of large-bodied mammals during the Late Quaternary period remain contentious. Here we use ancient DNA, species distribution models and the human fossil record to elucidate how climate and humans shaped the demographic history of woolly ...

Humans not to blame for all Ice Age mammals' demise

EXTRACT: The extinction of the woolly rhino and the Eurasian muskox of the last Ice Age can't be blamed on humans, a new study has found. But humans likely played a role in the demise of other large mammals such as wild horses and ancient bison, says an international team of scientists ...

A Diverse Assemblage of Late Cretaceous Dinosaur and Bird Feathers from Canadian Amber

EXTRACT: The fossil record of early feathers has relied on carbonized compressions that lack fine structural detail. Specimens in amber are preserved in greater detail, but they are rare. Late Cretaceous coal-rich strata from western Canada provide the richest and most diverse Mesozoic feather assemblage yet reported from amber. The fossils ...

Trapping time in amber

EXTRACT: (Edmonton) Secrets from the age of the dinosaurs are usually revealed by fossilized bones, but a University of Alberta research team has turned up a treasure trove of late Cretaceous feathers, which have been discovered trapped in tree resin. The resin turned to resilient amber preserving some 80-million-year-old protofeathers, possibly from ...

Antibiotic resistance found in ancient bacteria

EXTRACT: The same genes that make disease-causing bacteria resistant to today's antibiotics have been found in soil bacteria that have remained frozen since woolly mammoths roamed the Earth. “We’ve shown for the first time that drug resistance is a really old phenomenon and it’s part of the natural ecology of the planet,” ...

Tolerating antibiotics

EXTRACT: (Edmonton) Diseases with the ability to resist antibiotics are often considered a modern phenomenon, but a University of Alberta researcher specializing in the ice age is part of a Canadian team that is reporting that microbes have been building their defenses to antibiotics since the time of woolly mammoths. Manufactured antibiotics ...

Antibiotic resistance is ancient

EXTRACT: The discovery of antibiotics more than 70 years ago initiated a period of drug innovation and implementation in human and animal health and agriculture. These discoveries were tempered in all cases by the emergence of resistant microbes1, 2. This history has been interpreted to mean that antibiotic resistance in pathogenic ...