August 04, 2020 Global News: Early Mars was covered in ice rather than warm, free-flowing rivers, new study shows Mars may have been icier and colder than previously thought, a new study suggests. Researchers analyzed more than 10,000 Martian valleys and found that most on Mars’ surface were carved by water melting beneath glacial ice sheets, rather than free-flowing rivers. The joint study was conducted by Western University and the University of British Columbia and was published in the scientific journal Nature Geoscience on Monday.
April 20, 2020 Western Science Steps Up The magnitude to which the current Covid-19 pandemic has galvanized Canadians has not been seen in the better part of a century. From staying home to donating to food banks, there is no shortage of ways in which anyone can contribute; where there is a shortage, however, is in the personal protective equipment (PPE) required to safeguard our heroic essential workers. While Western has closed down many of its operations, we certainly have a bounty of PPE from labs across campus to contribute.
June 11, 2018 Reflections of a 21st Century researcher: scientists must speak the language of policy to have a lasting impact Towards the end of my masters degree in biology, I came across a disturbing statistic published by the Ontario Science Centre in 2017: 43 percent of Canadians believe scientific findings to be a matter of opinion. Here I am, a freshly minted grad, and the seemingly unshakeable body of knowledge upon which I based my research is seen by nearly half my country as “opinion”. Let’s not even delve into the fact that I studied climate change... I trudged through mountains of evidence, defended a thesis, I was vetted by other profs, yet when I step out of the ivory tower the only thing on my mind is this shrieking wake-up call of how easily I could take for granted the validity and importance of scientific research.
