Saskatoon Offers Robotic Cow Massagers, Big Physics and More

By Pippa Wysong (June 26, 2015)

TORONTO – From robotic cow massagers to photon accelerators and big physics, to a major vaccine development centre, Saskatoon is a hub of science, discovery and outreach.  This, of course, was a delightful find for the nearly 100 members of the Canadian Science Writers’ Association (CSWA) who attended the annual conference there. We couldn’t get enough of what the University of Saskatchewan had to offer.

The first stop on campus was the Rayner Dairy Research and Teaching Facility, home to about 100 cows where research is done looking at how feed combinations affect milk production, the use of robotic technology, cow health, fertility and more. Between that and the Ryan-Dube Equine Performance Centre, veterinary college students learn how to work with big animals.

We saw cows, ready to be milked, wander into an automatic milking stall. A cow walks in, had treats she could snack on, and stands there while milking cups attach themselves to her udders – guided by a robotic vision system. When done, the cow we watched languidly walked out.

Next to this was a robotic arm in the form of a large spinning brush that could be activated by a cow to get a back-scratch or massage. And just as our guide was describing how cows voluntarily walk over to the device and activate it, one did. It was a bovine spa moment.

Devices like these are starting to appear in actual dairy farms because, well, the cows like it, according to Dr. Bernard Laarveld who teaches animal and poultry science. He noted that when outside, cows often rub their backs or sides against a fence or tree. It feels good. Mimicking this indoors makes cows happy.

We also toured the Canadian Light Source (CLS) where several physicists described their projects, ranging from using the synchrotron for medical diagnostics, to soil analysis. The ranges of light frequencies it uses means it is one of the most sensitive tools in Canada for analysing the structure and chemistry of materials, including soil, metals and biologic materials.

Impressively, the public can request tours for both the Rayner centre and the CLS.

GMOS

Being in the agriculture research capital of Canada, the topic of GMOs came up. A keynote talk was given by Mark Lynas, a former anti-GMO food activist who was behind various campaigns ripping GMO crops out of fields, in England. He now regrets the activism.

Why? The AAAS - The American Association for the Advancement of Science released a consensus statement saying climate change was real and that the science overwhelmingly demonstrated it. He was impressed with the science. But then the AAAS released a consensus statement saying GMOs are safe, and generally good for farming and for feeding the world's population. He couldn't support the one on climate change, and not the one on GMOs since the quality of the science was excellent for both, he said. During his activism days, he says he didn’t know the science.

The group got the chance to meet numerous other scientists at the conference in areas ranging from Arctic water quality, soil science, a researcher comparing heritage vs modern wheat, global food security, vaccine development, and more. And there was a public talk by Jay Ingram about Alzheimer’s Disease (he also gave a talk on effective and creative story-telling methods).

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

What about the art of science communication? Speakers from Mashable, Greymadder.net and the CBC gave inspiring talks about new ways of presenting stories and the changing market place. Personal stories still matter when it comes to what people want to read, said Alix Hayden who launched Greymadder. Professional development sessions were useful for beginner and seasoned science writers alike.

There was fun too, such as the boat tour on the Saskatchewn River on a perfect day. We mingled with researchers working on how to deal with the effects of climate change (such as drought) and managing this valuable river source – the water of which is needed for most of Canada’s crops. These world-class researchers are also working as consultants in China and advising how to reduce emissions and water pollution there – much of which eventually flows to Canadian waters.

With a population of only 250,000, the city of Saskatoon sure packs in a lot of world-class science.

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The Science of Snow

I live in Regina, Saskatchewan. We joke that weather is more than small-talk here. Too often, it's what everyone is talking about.

This winter, it's a topic with a vengeance. According to Environment Canada, we've been setting snow records this year:

- a new daily record of 24 cm November 9
- more snow in the first three weeks of November than we had all last winter
- the snowiest November since the 1880s

In December, the snow continued. And with another 20+ cm dump yesterday, January just seems like more of the same.

As you can probably tell, I'm not a fan of snow. But if you can't get away from it, you might as well dig into it. So I'm digging out a copy of Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin, searching on the Internet, and turning to science to help me beat the winter blahs.

Snowflake Bentley tells the story of Vermont farmer Wilson Bentley, who studied snow and took pictures of snow crystals. In the book, someone tells Bentley that "snow in Vermont is as common as dust." I laughed when I read those lines. Did you know that snowflakes start out as tiny crystals no larger than a speck of dirt or dust, and join with other crystals when they fall? Most snowflakes are six-sided, and the size of one flake depends on the number of crystals forming it. When I was a child, I remember catching snowflakes on a mitten. An individual snowflake can be quite beautiful.

That's hard to believe when you look at the pile of snow in my front yard these days. Thank goodness for neighbours with snowploughs! Lately I haven't been looking at the individual snowflakes, like Bentley did, because there's just been too much of it. Some of it is packed hard; some is powdery; some has already melted and frozen often enough to form ice underneath.

The National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) has collected a whole database of types of snow. The NSIDC site talks about blizzards, flurries, and snowbursts like the ones we've experienced this winter. We're too familiar with blowing snow and drifting snow. That's all we seem to see on the roads lately. The site lists some unusual types too, like "névé" (refrozen and compacted) and "graupel" (rounded snowflakes or snow pellets).

My favorite is hoarfrost. We've certainly had what feels like record amounts of hoarfrost on the trees this winter, but I haven't taken the time to enjoy the beauty of it. I think I'll go out and take some more pictures, as soon as it warms up.

Meanwhile, I thought I'd share some of the snow sites I found:

National Snow and Ice Data Centre

http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/snow/science/index.html

Science of snow: FamilyEducation.com

Snow Day by L L Melton

http://fun.familyeducation.com/childrens-science-activities/winter/35037.html

Study snow science: University of Montana

http://www.montana.edu/wwwes/programs/snow.htm

Please leave a comment and share interesting facts about snow or snow science with us.

By Marie Powell

Life in Wascana Lake: Aquatic ecosystem studies

By Marie Powell

I had the chance to learn more about Regina's man-made Wascana Lake recently in a new speaker's night at the Saskatchewan Science Centre.

One of the speakers was Dr. Richard Vogt. He has a postdoctoral fellowship in biology at the University of Regina to study structure and functioning of aquatic communities and ecosystems. He works with Dr. Peter Leavitt in the Limnology Lab, using the long-term database of lakes in the Qu'Appelle River catchment to explore important questions in limnology (meaning the study of freshwater lakes and marshes) and aquatic ecology.

Limnology lab scientists monitor Wascana Lake as one of six major lakes in the Qu'Appelle Valley wastershed, Vogt told about 30 people who came to hear three speakers on water issues on May 4, to open the exhibit "Water's Extreme Journey." Vogt grew up in Ontario and took his PhD in Aquatic Community Ecolology from the University of Quebec in Montreal. He said his colleagues would envy the U of R for its “rare and valuable” database of samples, collected every two weeks – in all seasons – for some 16 years.

Part of Vogt's studies with Leavitt include the effect of Regina’s “Big Dig” in 2004. During the $18-million Wascana Lake Revitalization Project, or “Big Dig" as it's known locally, Wascana was dredged from about 1.5 metres to about five metres in depth, removing over 1.3 million cubic metres of soil in about four months. (More on the dig can be found in The Big Dig: The Miracle of Wascana Centre by Bob Hughes.)

Vogt's studies show that surprisingly, the project hasn’t affected Wascana Lake the way scientists predicted it would. For example, scientists predicted the dredging would make the lake less clear and cause an increase in algae. Up to then, he said, rooted plants locked up the nutrients in the lake sediments, providing a habitat for zooplankton that graze on algae. Plants growing all the way to the water’s surface would get caught in people’s boat oars, and have to be mulched periodically.

But the dredging caused “no change in the most important water quality indicators” in the lake, Vogt said. Although the overall number of plants was reduced, there has been no increase in algae, and no decrease in clarity. There are some differences in algae species that thrive in the lake, but “for the most part we see a similar diversity,” he added.

For more information, check http://www.uregina.ca/biology/faculty/Leavitt/labsite_files/wascana.html

Marie Powell is the author of Dragonflies are Amazing! (Scholastic Canada, Grade Two Guided Reading, 2007). (Note: A version of this material appears in Marie's article in Metro Regina print edition, May 10 2012. Photo: Wascana Lights by L L Melton.)

Seeing the real McCoy... er, McDino

I love really old animals. Really, really old animals! Not just dinosaurs, but ancient mammals and sea monsters and proto-birds and mysterious undersea critters that have left their imprint in ancient rocks... all of them. And I love thinking about how they and their worlds link up with us and our world.

In fact, I love that so much that I've written two books on the subject: Super Crocs and Monster Wings, and Spiked Scorpions and Walking Whales.

So, imagine my delight at visiting the T. rex Discovery Centre in Eastend, a small town in southwestern Saskatchewan.


Although it was named for Scotty, the Tyrannosaurus rex found nearby, the Discovery Centre is a treasure trove of an amazing range of fossils from the area, from giant sea creatures that swam in the great inland sea that once covered most of the Great Plains to the strange-looking mammals that evolved to fill niches left by the disappearance of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Still, Scotty the T. rex is pretty cool. With more than 65 percent of her skeleton complete, she (probably she) is the most complete T. rex found in Canada so far. Scotty was discovered 20 years ago near Eastend. All her fossil bits are in the Royal Saskatchewan Museum's fossil research lab, which is housed in the Discovery Centre. There's something rather amazing about peering through a huge glass window to see a complete set of fossilized dinosaur vertebrae laid out in order on four large shelves. Not replicas. The real thing!

Coincidentally, in the year that Scotty was discovered, 1991, other scientists discovered the impact site of a huge meteor that struck Earth 65 million years ago and hastened the extinction of the dinosaurs, as well as plenty of other animals. In fact, 75 percent of the species on earth became extinct after that impact.

The meteor left its mark around the world, in a layer of light-coloured clay and ash, often rich in the element iridium, which is more common in meteors than in Earth's crust. It's called the K-T Boundary because it marks the end of the geological time called the Cretaceous Period (it starts with a K in German) and the beginning of the Tertiary Period.

And there it was, too! Not just a diagram of rock layers or a photograph, but a chunk of rock from the Frenchman River Valley with the actual K-T Boundary layer running through it. Below that pale line was rock a dinosaur might have stepped on. Above it was rock that might once have carried the footprint of a mammal exploring its new, dinosaur-free world.

When you spend a lot of time reading about the ancient past, looking at pictures or replicas of fossils, and even writing about it, seeing the real thing right in front of you is a thrill.

Can you tell?

Claire Eamer