Work stoppage possible as WestJet issues lockout notice to maintenance engineers' union
A lockout notice issued by WestJet to a union representing aircraft maintenance engineers could result in a work stoppage next week.
The coelacanth -- a giant weird fish still around from dinosaur times -- can live for 100 years, a new study found.
These slow-moving, people-sized fish of the deep, nicknamed a "living fossil," are the opposite of the live fast, die young mantra. These nocturnal fish grow at an achingly slow pace.
Females don't hit sexual maturity until their late 50s, the study said, while male coelacanths are sexually mature at 40 to 69 years. And maybe strangest of all, researchers figure pregnancy in the fish lasts about five years.
Coelacanths, which have been around for 400 million years, were thought extinct until they were found alive in 1938 off South Africa. Scientists long believed coelacanths live about 20 years. But by applying a standard technique for dating commercial fish, French scientists calculated they actually live close to a century, according to a study in Thursday's Current Biology.
Coelacanths are so endangered that scientists can only study specimens already caught and dead.
In the past, scientists calculated fish ages by counting big lines on a specific coelacanth scale. But the French scientists found they were missing smaller lines that could only be seen using polarized light -- the technique used to figure out the age of commercial fish.
Study co-author Bruno Ernande, a marine evolutionary ecologist at France's marine research institute, said polarized light revealed five smaller lines for every big one. The researchers concluded the smaller lines better correlated to a year of coelacanth age -- and that indicated their oldest specimen was 84 years old.
Using the technique, the scientists studied two embryos and calculated the largest was five years old and the youngest was nine years old. So, Ernande said, they figured pregnancy lasts at least five years in coelacanths, which have live births.
That five-year gestation is "very strange" for fish or any animal, said Scripps Institution of Oceanography's Harold Walker, who wasn't part of the research.
Even though coelacanths are unrelated genetically and show wide evolutionary differences, they age slowly like other dwellers of the deep, sharks and rays, Ernande said. "They might have evolved similar life histories because they are sharing similar type habitats," he said.
----
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
A lockout notice issued by WestJet to a union representing aircraft maintenance engineers could result in a work stoppage next week.
Sheldon Keefe told his players hockey history would remember them one way or another.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
A gag order bars Trump from commenting publicly on witnesses, jurors and some others connected to the matter. The New York judge already has found that Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, repeatedly violated the order, fined him US$9,000 and warning that jail could follow if he doesn't comply.
If you're wondering whether you should splurge or save when it comes to buying skincare products and makeup this summer, we got some answers for you.
A man was denied a $5,000 payout from his brother after a B.C. tribunal dismissed his claim disputing how many kittens were born in a litter.
As Ukraine marked its third Easter at war, Russia on Sunday launched a barrage of drones concentrated in Ukraine's east, wounding more than a dozen people, and claimed its troops took control of a village they had been targeting.
How legitimate are claims by some content creators that the average person can earn passive income from social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram? Personal finance columnist Christopher Liew says it's quite possible, if you're willing to put in the initial time and effort.
Almost a week after all London Drugs stores across Western Canada abruptly closed amid a cyberattack, they began a "gradual reopening" on Saturday.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
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.