Doctors concerned about potential spread of bird flu in Canada
H5N1 or avian flu has been detected at dozens of US dairy farms and Canadian experts are urging surveillance on our side of the border too.
Researchers say they have successfully made a synthetic version of polar bear fur that is not only lighter than cotton but also warmer.
Three engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have developed a two-layered fabric that models not just the bear's fur but also its black skin that helps it stay warm.
The researchers say their work, published on April 5 in the journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, caps an 80-year quest to create a textile that mimics polar bear fur.
They say the fabric is already in development for commercial use.
"While our textile really shines as outerwear on sunny days, the light-heat trapping structure works efficiently enough to imagine using existing indoor lighting to directly heat the body," Wesley Viola, the paper's lead author, said in a university news story published on Monday.
"By focusing energy resources on the 'personal climate' around the body, this approach could be far more sustainable than the status quo."
The researchers say polar bears' white fur is effective at transmitting solar radiation toward their skin.
"But the fur is only half the equation," Trisha L. Andrew, the paper's senior author, said. "The other half is the polar bears' black skin."
Andrew says polar bear fur acts as a "natural fibre optic," conducting sunlight to the skin, which absorbs the light and heats the bear.
At the same time, the fur also helps prevent the skin from radiating too much warmth, akin to a thick blanket that warms itself up and then traps the heat, the researchers say.
The synthetic fabric works in a similar way with a top layer of threads that conducts light to a lower layer made of nylon and coated with a dark material called PEDOT, which warms up.
The researchers say a jacket using this material would be 30 per cent lighter than another made of cotton but would leave the wearer more comfortable at temperatures 10 C colder, as long as the sun is out.
The scientists say a Boston-based company called Soliyard has already started producing cloth coated in this PEDOT material.
H5N1 or avian flu has been detected at dozens of US dairy farms and Canadian experts are urging surveillance on our side of the border too.
Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem says Canadian interest rates don't have to match U.S. or global rates, but there is a limit to how much they can diverge.
Prince William and his wife Kate released a picture of their daughter Charlotte to mark the princess's ninth birthday on Thursday.
A Canadian restaurant lowered its prices this week, and though news of price tags dropping rather than climbing sounds unusual, the business strategy in this case is not, according to experts in the field.
Investors considering where to park their money have a choice: go with a traditional financial adviser or trust in an algorithm. Here are the pros and cons of both.
Archeologists have unearthed the skeletons of five people, missing their hands and feet, at a former Nazi military base in Poland.
Hamas on Thursday was considering the latest proposal for a ceasefire with Israel that the United States and other mediators hope will avert an Israeli attack on the Gaza town of Rafah.
Nathaly Paola Castro Torres has a rare disorder called Laron syndrome that is caused by a genetic mutation. It stunts her growth but also provides a hidden silver lining: Her body is protected from chronic diseases such as cancer that often take life away long before old age.
Inspections are underway at more than one Loblaws location in Ottawa after complaints were filed about tall Plexiglas barriers.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.
The lawyer for a residential school survivor leading a proposed class-action defamation lawsuit against the Catholic Church over residential schools says the court action is a last resort.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.