U of T St. George recently got a ‘B’ on the 2010 College Sustainability Report Card, the largest survey of environmental commitment amongst North American educational institutions. The annual Report Card is published by the Sustainability Endowments Institute, a Massachusetts-based NGO and research group affiliated with the Rockefeller Foundation. Using both student input and data…

The need for landfill diversion is becoming increasingly apparent in an era of rampant consumerism and waste creation. Vermiculture is one method of on-site composting embraced by the Victoria College residence to reduce overall waste through food waste processing. Vermiculture uses different species of earthworms, including white worms and red wigglers, to break down food…

A radical new approach towards energy conservation has recently been changing the face of environmentalism on the St. George campus. Rewire, a student initiative coordinated by the U of T Sustainability Office, is a project which gives the university community first-hand experience of the importance of energy-conservation. Rather than trusting abstruse, bureaucratic policies, Rewire takes…

This past Tuesday at U of T’s Athletic Centre, 100 new solar collector panels became functional and began supplying energy to run the facilities within the building. In peak sunshine months, the panels will generate enough energy to contribute approximately 25% of the heat used by the shower and laundry services, significantly reducing overall consumption…

One hundred million sheets of paper. That represents the annual consumption rate at U of T's St. George Campus alone. Further compounding the environmental impact of the raw resources required to make this much paper is the associated 1,500 tonnes in greenhouse gas emissions this consumption produces. Conscious of this carbon footprint and the associated…

A few issues ago, a colleague of mine wrote a piece for The Science about music-induced hearing loss in relation to the surge of portable media players on the market. Tinnitus (ringing ears) and Hyperacusis (oversensitivity to everyday noise) affecting more and more people with a bad habit of cranking Lil’Wayne and Slipknot, displaying as…

If you haven’t been living under a rock, you may remember the plethora of product recalls last year due to lead contamination. In fact, last October, Mattel Inc. agreed to a settlement involving approximately 20 million toys containing lead paint or small magnets. Much scrutiny is afforded to such products since lead exposure can cause…

I used to have anger issues. When I was 13, after my marks slipped and I had organized hockey taken away from me. It was enough to induce a seizure-like temper tantrum. The type where you locked yourself in your room, a sobbing mess, throwing picture frames and trophies, kicking and punching every piece of…

The concept of cancer immunosurveillance, whereby the immune system is capable of detecting and killing cancerous cells in the body, has been around since the turn of the 20th century. It was proposed in passing by Dr. Paul Ehrlich, a German scientist and Nobel Prize winner, long before a general understanding of the immune system…

Before the modern scientific era, there existed a class of scientists whose expertise knew no boundaries. They would seamlessly transition between fields and sub-specialties, shortly after which they would produce a brainchild that would evolve into a scientific law. Aristotle, Newton, Galelei, the list goes on, but since Charles Darwin, no one has since matched…

Everyone has their list of favourite TV shows, and mine is composed primarily of medical and crime drama shows (though Glee is one of my guilty pleasures), such as Law & Order: SVU. In last week’s episode, Detective Benson was accused of murdering a notorious biker gang member based on DNA analysis of blood found…

Have you ever wondered what factors can influence a guy’s physical attraction to women? Numerous researchers have addressed this question before and found men are most attracted to females with high facial femininity and a low waist-to-hip ratio.