Coffee is as much a part of our society as television, music, and automobiles. Its provision of the stimulant caffeine is a functional answer to sleep deprivation, a low-key first-date proposal, a hangover cure, and it is a socially acceptable beverage to offer and consume any time of day. Beyond coffee’s engrained social status are significant health implications and a potent economic punch.
The history of coffee
850 B.C. – Coffee makes its appearance in the Kaffa region...
As COVID-19 continues to dominate North American media coverage, a drug-overdose crisis rages under the radar.
Deaths from drug overdose in Canada are up by an average of 54% during the pandemic.Opioid- and Stimulant-related Harms in Canada - Public Health Infobase | Public Health Agency of Canada Some experts are calling on the government to make access to drugs easier as supply dwindles and demand is at a fever pitch.
In the province of British Columbia,...
There has been a lot of heated discussion about the recent weather-related electricity crisis in Texas. In case you somehow missed it, the temperature in much of the southern United States dropped to very unusual lows for several days in a row in February 2021. The low temperatures caused snowfall and freezing rain in many areas, creating havoc on the roads for drivers with neither winter driving experience nor snow tires.
Much worse, however, were...
Physical health has come under great scrutiny during the COVID-19 crisis, but related mental health factors may have a longer-lasting, further-reaching, and more significant impact on societal norms and demands on health-care systems.
A review of studies conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, mostly in China but including the United States, Canada, and European countries, has highlighted alarming trends regarding mental health markers associated with elevated suicide rates. It is important to keep in mind that...
When one digs deeply into the sweeping sphere of cancer there is an abundance of misinformation and an endless stream of puzzling dilemmas and unanswered questions.
We have a cure; “Big Pharma” is preventing that cure from making it to market.
Cannabis cures cancer.
There is no cure for cancer.
Can anybody truly say they are an expert on cancer if they can’t cure it? Can you really understand the cause if you cannot...
With files from Brad Hayes
An oft-cited criticism of wind and solar is that they are expensive and uneconomic in comparison to the incumbent generation sources (coal, gas, hydro, and nuclear) that make up the bulk of global electricity generation. Higher electricity prices are, of course, undesirable to most consumers, but they would also hinder widespread adoption of wind and solar. To date, this issue has been addressed with subsidies and incentives put in place...
Photo courtesy Smithsonian Magazine
We are constantly bombarded with contradictory views not only on the magnitude and effects of future climate changes, but on the best ways to address the issues. It is very difficult for even the best-read layperson to make sense of the widely disparate and often hostile viewpoints.
To start out, it is important to distinguish between the scientific investigations addressing climate, and the actions we undertake to deal with climate-related problems. Scientific...
Top male gamer influencer Dan Middleton (aka DanTDM)
“Social media influencer” – it is a real job title, and many in the profession are making real money.
Some influencers make more in one sponsored post than many of us make in an entire year. We dig into how they make their money and how much, who is paying them, and whether or not the investment into someone’s influence offers a significant return.
Influencing consumers to purchase goods...
Vaccines were created to elicit an immune response to a disease-producing pathogen. We typically know them as containing either pieces of – or a weakened or dead form of – the pathogen itself, but this has changed in recent years. The initial round of approved COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna represents a new class of vaccines, called mRNA vaccines. These vaccines contain no element of the original pathogen itself, only blueprints, which allows...
We’ve all seen it – the stark image of a gaunt polar bear stranded on a slab of ice, drifting away from shore.
Many wildlife advocates and government officials cited this particular photo as more evidence that human-driven climate change is pushing this species to the brink of extinction. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/20/climate/polar-bear-extinction.html
Is this an accurate depiction of the plight of the polar bear?
Before we answer this question, let’s take a step back.
The majority of polar...
