Canadian Woman Awarded Nobel Prize Laurel

© Hanna Franzen/TT News Agency via Reuters The 2018 Nobel Prize laureates in physics, Arthur Ashkin of the United States, Gerard Mourou of France and Donna Strickland of Canada, are announced at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on Tuesday.

Donna Strickland, an associate professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, on Tuesday became the first woman in 55 years and the third ever to win the Nobel Prize in Physics, sharing it with an American scientist and another from France for their work in laser physics.

The Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences on Tuesday said half the $1.28-million Cdn prize goes to Arthur Ashkin of the United States, and the other half will be shared by Strickland and Gérard Mourou.

The academy said Ashkin, who is the oldest person ever named as a laureate at 96, developed "optical tweezers" that can grab tiny particles such as viruses without damaging them.

Strickland, 59, and Mourou, 74, separately helped develop short and intense laser pulses that have "opened up new areas of research and led to broad industrial and medical applications," it said.

Their discoveries became the standard for high-intensity lasers used in millions of corrective eye surgeries every year, among other applications.

Strickland is the first female Nobel laureate to be named in three years and is only the third woman winning in physics: Marie Curie earned the award in 1903 and Maria Goeppert Mayer in 1963.

"Obviously we need to celebrate women physicists, because we're out there. And hopefully in time it'll start to move forward at a faster rate, maybe," Strickland said in a phone call with the academy after the prize announcement.

A-List Ryan Gosling and Denis Villeneuve Lead List of Canada’s Oscar Nominees

Canadian Oscar nominees Denis Villeneuve and Ryan Gosling pulled away from their jam-packed schedules Tuesday morning to marvel over their Academy Award kudos.

They chatted by phone soon after Villeneuve learned he’d snagged his first directing nomination for the aliens-have-landed thriller Arrival, and Gosling picked up a best acting nod, one of a leading 14 nominations for La La Land.

“We are both proud of each other and happy for each other. It’s quite a nice ride for both of us and I’m very, very happy for what he did,” Villeneuve said from Los Angeles.

“Ryan is a kind of comical genius. He has that sense. He’s a very, very strong actor and I’m very proud of what he did in La La Land.”

Arrival is also up for best picture and six other awards, with several Canadian nominees in categories including production design and sound.

HitchBOT takes robot road trip to Germany

Hitchbot and co-creators Frauke Zeller and David Smith. Chad Hipolito/CP

Torstar News Service
HitchBOT is headed for the Autobahn. The Canadian-made hitchhiking robot that talked and tweeted its way from Halifax to Victoria last summer — that talked and tweeted its way in the Rockies and being bestowed with an honorary name at a powwow on Manitoulin Island — is gearing up for its next quest: thumbing its way around Germany.

The robot’s designers are hoping it will receive a comparably warm welcome on its first foreign foray, after it won the adoration of hundreds on its maiden trek across Canada.

“I think being helpful to something that needs help is something that is innate to everybody,” said Frauke Zeller, the Ryerson University professor and hitchBOT co-creator, who is also from Germany.

McDavid's early goal helps Canada beat Germany

 McDavid's early goal helps Canada beat Germany

The Canadian Press
Of course, everyone knew that Connor McDavid's so-called scoring "drought" wasn't going to last.

The player tabbed by many to go first overall in the NHL draft in June broke out with a goal and two assists as Canada downed a surprisingly stubborn Germany 4-0 on Saturday at the world junior championship.

The 17-year-old McDavid had been held without a point in Canada's tournament-opening 8-0 drubbing of Slovakia the night before, but any talk of a slump was put to rest when he scored on a power play only 4:11 into the game.

"It's exciting, I haven't scored in a long time," said McDavid, who got his first goal in a real game since he broke his right hand in a fight during a game on Nov. 11. "I missed a whole bunch of games.

Canadian companies who went global through crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is increasingly becoming a growth strategy for real — but still small — companies with big ideas. Mass Fidelity, headquartered just east of Toronto, turned to Indiegogo earlier this year to help get its Core wireless speaker system from the prototype stage into production. | Mass Fidelity

Michael Oliveira The Canadian PressThere was $1.3 million raised for high-fidelity wireless speakers, almost $1.2 million for specialty drones and $820,000 for smart-bikes.

In 2014, three tiny Canadian companies went from teetering in obscurity to making headlines on tech blogs around the world thanks to successful crowdfunding campaigns that spurred exponential growth almost overnight.

Once the domain of hobbyists and tinkerers, crowdfunding is increasingly becoming a growth strategy for real — but still small — companies with big ideas.

“An older paradigm about crowdfunding was four guys in their garage who couldn’t find money any other way,” said Steve Tam, a marketing manager with Indiegogo Canada.

University of British Columbia student designs robot that solves Rubik’s cube

Recent UBC grad Kristopher De Asis has designed and built a robot that can both solve and scramble a Rubik's cube in potentially record-setting time. Courtesy UBC 

Thandi Fletcher Metro Solving a Rubik’s cube is no easy feat— except for a robot named Josh.

Recent University of B.C. graduate Kristopher De Asis has designed and built a robot that can solve the famous six-sided puzzle in potentially record-setting time.

Dubbed Josh, the ‘bot can solve a 2×2 Rubik’s cube, which has two layers, in about 15 seconds and a standard Rubik’s cube, which has three layers, in about 35 seconds.

“I believe it’s the fastest one-armed robot,” De Asis told Metro. “The quicker ones use two or four arms.”

For 2nd Consecutive Year Bighorn Ski Chalet BC Named Best In The World

For the second consecutive year, a ski chalet in Revelstoke, B.C. has been named the best in the world.

Bighorn lodge won the title of "World's Best Ski Chalet" from the 2014 World Ski Awards, which started last year.

Gorgeous and cozy, Bighorn boasts an outdoor hot tub, a cinema, and a spa. Revelstoke, located in B.C.'s Kootenays, is known for its heli-skiing (where a helicopter takes you to unparalleled and hard-to-access ski terrain).

Ski industry professionals (tour operators, agents, senior executives, travel buyers, and media) as well as the public vote on the awards.

Other notable winners include France's Val Thorens for best ski resort, Utah's Stein Eriksen Lodge for best ski hotel, and Japan's The Vale Niseko for best ski boutique hotel.

Huff

Winnipeg man wins world champion beer runner

Contributed/Josh Baker Winnipeg’s Corey Gallagher heads down the straight away trailed closely by Australian Jack Colreavy at the Flotrack Beer Mile World Championships in Austin, TX Wednesday.

 Shane Gibson Metro A Winnipeg letter carrier can now say he’s literally the world’s fastest beer drinker.

Long distance runner Corey Gallagher, 27, brought home the blue ribbon at the first ever Beer Mile Championship in Austin, Texas Wednesday night.

The contest sees runners pound four beers during a one-mile race. Starting with one before the race starts, runners then stop for three more quick ones every quarter-mile of the contest. Anyone who vomits is forced to take an extra lap.

“It’s not so much about going out there and getting drunk or just hammering these beers to see who can drink them the fastest and who can get drunk,” explained Gallagher from Texas Thursday, calling the race more of an endurance contest to see who can perform the best while battling the disadvantages brought on by a few cold ones. “The second you put the beer in there you’re burping, it’s carbonated, it starts foaming up.

Canadian female runners set Guinness record on treadmills

CTV Reports- A Canadian team of female runners will be inducted into the Guinness World Records Thursday night for running the greatest distance on a treadmill in 12 hours.

The team of 12 runners was participating in a 12-hour Megathon to raise money for the YMCA’s charitable fund, “The Strong Kids Campaign.”

Each woman ran either two 30-minute segments or one full hour consecutively between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. for a total of 171.7 km.

While the event happened back in March, representatives from the Guinness World Records in London only recently confirmed the record.

Ottawa man wins gold in world moustache competition

Colin Geitzler, a.k.a. Snidely Mansfield, competes with an English-style moustache at the World Beard and Moustache Championships in Oregon on Oct. 25, 2014. (Colin Geitzler)

Sporting a waxed, pointed moustache that spans 45 centimetres, an Ottawa man claimed a top prize at the World Beard and Moustache Championships in Oregon.

Colin Geitzler, who competes as Snidely Mansfield, took home the gold medal in the English moustache category while competing against more than 300 other competitors from all around the world over the weekend.

It was the first time Mansfield has ever competed. Many of the competitors were from Oregon and Washington, but almost every U.S. state was represented and others flew in from countries as far away as Iran.

Ebola News: Canadian Vaccine Sent WHO For Clinical Trials

The experimental Canadian Ebola vaccine that has been donated to the World Health Organization will be shipped to Geneva on Monday, the agency said today.

The final legal agreement was signed earlier this week and now the WHO will take possession of the 800 to 1,000 vials of the vaccine. However, Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny, the WHO's assistant director general for health systems and innovation, says it is too difficult to ship it over the weekend.

"It is dangerous to ship it over the weekend because you don't know if the customs — not everybody is there. The pharmacy at the hospital who will store the vaccine for us is closed on Sunday," Kieny told CBC News.

"So what we have arranged is to send it immediately after the weekend on Monday."

The clinical trials on the vaccine will start late October or early November, to determine if it is safe to use in humans and if so, what the dosage should be.

ThumbsUp! Toronto hospital implants Canada’s first ‘bionic eye’

Bionic eye implants let Canadian patients perceive light

Sheryl Ubelacker | The Canadian Press
It’s not exactly the bionic eye that gave the Six Million Dollar Man of 1970s TV fame extraordinary vision, but a new implant is helping some people with virtually no sight due to degenerative retinal diseases make more sense out of light and dark images, and it may one day dramatically improve their ability to see.

Doctors at Toronto Western Hospital have implanted the Argus Retinal Prosthesis System in the first two patients as part of a 10-person clinical study, the first such operations performed in Canada.

The device implanted in the eye uses a tiny patch containing 60 electrodes that transfer image impulses to the retinal nerves, which then travel through the main optic nerve to the brain for processing.

The images are sent to the eye through a tiny video camera on the bridge of a special pair of glasses, which are wired to a small battery-operated computer modulator that’s worn outside the body.

“Bionic eye is a good word,” said ophthalmologist-in-chief Dr. Robert Devenyi, who is part of the surgical research team.

“It’s an artificial device that stimulates electronically what normally the body would do … It stimulates the eye directly,” Devenyi said Tuesday of the device, explaining that it bypasses the layer of the eye where receptors called rods and cones normally convert light energy into neuronal signals.

Innovation | University of Toronto students create plug-free electric car-bike

Torstar News Service. Phil Lam, left, and Jonathan Lung have created a startup, Sojourn Labs, supported by U of T's Impact Centre.

Torstar News Service

It’s a car! It’s a bike! No … it’s a plug-free electric hybrid prototype!

OK, so they need to work on the name, but it’s a smart concept: a team of PhD candidates from the University of Toronto has created an electric pedal-powered car-bike that could help beat the traffic snarls that plague our city’s streets.

“The project was inspired by my experiences commuting from Union Station,” co-creator Phil Lam says with a laugh. “But everybody’s experience is bad, right? Drivers get stuck in traffic. People who take public transit never get anywhere on time. Walking is pleasant, but it doesn’t take you very far … Cycling, if not outright dangerous, is certainly uncomfortable for a lot of reasons. Everybody’s suffering in their own way. The answer is reinterpreting how we get around.”

Fitted with wires, bike parts and a few Tupperware containers, the prototype looks like a cross between a recumbent bicycle and a homemade sci-fi space pod. Within the lightweight aluminum chassis, however, are the seeds of a vision for healthier, happier, and more sustainable urban transport in increasingly dense cities.

You charge the vehicle’s battery by pedalling. The intensity of pedalling controls its 500-watt engine’s throttle. The engine itself is fully programmable, which means that you can easily adjust the pedal-to-engine-power ratio. Rushing to an important meeting? Let the engine do most of the work, so you don’t show up sweaty. In need of a little exercise? Pedal the roughly 45-kilogram vehicle until you feel the burn.

Ebola Update: Canadian Made Ebola Vaccine To Be Tested On Humans

Canadian made Ebola vaccine to start trials on healthy humans, says Rona Ambrose. (AP Photo/NIAID, File) | ASSOCIATED PRESS

Human testing of an experimental Canadian-made Ebola vaccine began Monday, with federal officials saying the drug could be shipped to West Africa within months if it proves successful.

Health Minister Rona Ambrose said the launch of the vaccine's first clinical trial marks a promising step in the global campaign to contain the virus, which the World Health Organization says has killed more than 4,000 people.

"This provides hope because if the Canadian vaccine is shown to be safe and effective, it will stop this devastating outbreak,'' Ambrose said in a conference call from Calgary.

Twenty vials of the vaccine have been sent to the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Maryland for testing on about 40 healthy volunteers, she said.

The Phase 1 trial will determine if the vaccine created by Public Health Agency of Canada and known as VSV-EBOV is safe for human use. It will also determine the proper dosage level and test for possible side effects, Ambrose said.

Studies have shown the vaccine works in primates both to prevent infection when given before exposure and to increase survival chances when given quickly after exposure.

Canada's chief public health officer said results from the human trial are expected by December, and if successful, the next stage would be to test it in a larger human sample, including those directly handling Ebola cases in West Africa.

Ebola Update: Canadian Made Vaccine Soon To Be Tested

Getty Images. A health worker stands behind the fencing of an Ebola quarantine and treatment centre in Monrovia, Liberia.

With talk turning to the idea that Ebola vaccines and drugs may be needed to quell the West African outbreak, the tiny U.S. company that holds the licence for a Canadian-made vaccine says it is working as fast as it can to get that option tested and ready for use.

NewLink Genetics says at least five clinical trials involving the vaccine, known as VSV-EBOV, will soon be under way in the United States, Germany, Switzerland and in an unnamed African country which is not battling Ebola. As well, the Canadian government has said it wants to conduct a trial in this country.

Vaccine for these studies will be provided by the Canadian government, said a spokesperson for NewLink, which is based in Ames, Iowa.

Brian Wiley, the company’s vice-president of business development, said both the vaccine Canada donated to the World Health Organization and the remaining vials Canada was keeping back for clinical studies will be used for human studies.

Canada Leading Telescopic Discovery For Extraterrestrials

Canada is contributing to a new space telescope that one scientist says may help in the search for signs of extraterrestrial life.

The Canadian Space Agency is providing a number of devices for the $8-billion James Webb Space Telescope, which is expected to launch in 2018.

The contributions include two cameras and one of the four science instruments on board the telescope.

A keynote speaker at a public science symposium in Montreal this Monday and Tuesday is hoping the telescope and others in the future will help lead to finding signs of life beyond Earth.

"A lot is riding on that telescope — including possibly the discovery of life," said Sara Seager, a Toronto-born professor of planetary science and physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Billboard's Hot 100 | Drake Now Has More Top 100 Singles Than The Beatles

Drake earned his 72nd appearance on Billboard's Hot 100, pushing him past The Beatles as the artist with the eighth greatest number of charts visits of all-time.

Featured on his recent OVO signee iLoveMakonnen's "Tuesday," the song's number 90 entrance broke Drake's tie with The Beatles at 71. Drake will tie Aretha Franklin with another entrance on the Hot 100, and he will tie Ray Charles with just two more. Drake has a bit to go before he catches up to current tourmate and mentor Lil Wayne at 122, and a seemingly insurmountable gap to clear to reach the "Glee" cast's 207 entries.

Here are the ten artists with the most Hot 100 entries:

1. "Glee" Cast - 207
2. Elvis Presley - 149
3. Lil Wayne - 122
4. James Brown - 91
5. Jay Z - 82
6. Ray Charles - 74
7. Aretha Franklin - 73
8. Drake - 72
9. The Beatles - 71
10. Elton John - 68

Wow! Toronto To Have A Park In The Sky

Ever since New York opened its High Line Park, a railroad track converted to urban greenspace, cities around the world have looked with envy at New York’s overground playground.

Now Toronto is getting its own overground playground, with Tuesday’s announcement of a “sky park” to be built around the city’s central train station.

Transit operator Metrolinx and developer Invanhoe Cambridge have released the first visuals of a new complex planned for the Union Station area, which will feature a new GO bus terminal for regional commuters and a 2.7-million-square-foot office complex.

It will also include a one-acre “sky park” over the railroad corridor.

Checkthisout | Blackberry comeback with a banger

       

BlackBerry unveiled the Passport on Wednesday, its boldest phone design since it went from pagers to handsets.

Many critics will make the mistake of comparing its prospects to Apple's iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, but it's not competing in the same arena.

Put another way, BlackBerry Passport will be a breathtaking success if it sells as many phones in six months as the 10 million that Apple sold last weekend. Under CEO John Chen, BlackBerry has staked its future on becoming a provider of secure enterprise software. Apple is selling phones while BlackBerry is using phones to market its focus on the secure enterprise.

The Passport, which will cost $599 off-contract, is block-shaped and square-faced. BlackBerry's explanation for the design makes sense: The display shows 60 characters of text at a readable size and shows enough depth in a document to get context, making it the best I've seen for reviewing and annotating documents.

Europe | What Struggling G20 Countries Can Learn From Canada

Finance Minister Joe Oliver says while some European countries need more stimulus spending, that's not what he's planning for Canada. | CP

Different economic situations require different approaches to meeting the G20's economic targets, Canada's finance minister said Sunday as he urged Europeans to follow Canada's recession-busting model.

Though finance chiefs from the 20 largest economies said they will focus on infrastructure investment to help reach the goal of boosting world GDP by more than $2 trillion over the next five years, that's not the necessarily the direction Canada is headed, Joe Oliver said.

"The type of action that we can take is different than the type of action that some, but not all, European countries have to take," Oliver told reporters in a conference call from Sydney where he was leaving the G20 finance ministers' latest talks.

Oliver said the government's stimulus program from 2008 achieved its desired goals.

Now, Oliver said, economic growth in Canada will come from increased labour mobility, lower taxes, trade and he hinted that more will be revealed in the next federal budget.