All Posts Tagged With: "seals"
Toronto scientists study sleep in seals
Brain chemicals to be scrutinized
Researchers at the University of Toronto say a new study on sleep patterns in seals could help explain what allows humans to get some shut-eye.
Researchers teamed up with biologists at UCLA and found that seals are able to both sleep and stay awake at the same time.
They say one half of a seal’s brain shuts down when they sleep in water while the other remains awake and on the lookout for possible danger.
The study authors say the findings may help guide research into the factors that control human sleep.
Studying a brain with both a sleeping and wakeful side can give scientists clues as to which chemicals are more heavily involved in the sleep cycle.
Early research suggests, for instance, that serotonin may play a less important role than scientists believed.
Ethical investing isn’t as easy as it sounds
Prof. Pettigrew on why universities can’t divest
Fort McMurray, Alta. oilsands (eryn.rickard/Flickr)
Here, Cape Breton University Professor Todd Pettigrew argues that divesting from “unethical” companies isn’t as easy as activists make it sound. After reading his commentary, check out Torrance Coste’s argument in favour of divestment.
I served, for a brief time, on the Board of Governors of Cape Breton University, and one thing I did during that period was speak in favour of looking into ethical investments. After all, we know from the proverbs that money talks. So if we are talking with our money, why not have it say something important?
Ethical investing, I argued at the time, seemed all the more urgent in the context of university education. If we are trying to teach our students to think critically, shouldn’t we ask tough questions about scholarship endowments and pension funds? Should we give scholarship funds to a student studying, let’s say, social justice, and then tell that student not to worry where that money came from?
Continue reading Ethical investing isn’t as easy as it sounds
Senate wants to kill 70,000 seals
Wrong to call this an experiment: Dalhousie biologist
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Northeast Region/Flickr
Canada should pay hunters to kill 70,000 seals off the East Coast to help the recovery of cod stocks even though there’s little scientific evidence to support a large cull, a Senate committee recommended Tuesday.
The committee spent almost a year studying a federal proposal to slaughter up to 70 per cent of the grey seal population in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence, a plan critics say has been driven by politics, not science.
“While acknowledging the ecological risks raised by some witnesses, the committee supports the logic of the proposed experimental reduction of grey seals in this area,” the committee said in its report.
The chairman of the committee, Senator Fabian Manning of Newfoundland, admitted the call for a cull was not based on scientific research.
“There’s no really solid research anywhere that shows us exactly — there’s questions on both sides,” he told a news conference on Parliament Hill.
