/oss/taxonomy/term/2178/all en /oss/article/health-and-nutrition-general-science/every-day-our-body-needs-demolish-billions-houses <p>Imagine waking up one day to a constant racket. You walk out of your house and see that your neighbour’s townhouse is being deconstructed. A crew is disassembling that house item by item, some of which will be reused somewhere else. You think to yourself, “At least they didn’t use a wrecking ball or my own house might not have been spared.”</p> <p>Every day, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nrc2663">tens of billions of our cells</a>—the cells that make up our brain, our heart, our skin—die in a very similar process of deconstruction.</p> Sat, 19 Feb 2022 09:00:00 +0000 Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. 9032 at /oss /oss/article/history-general-science/word-cisgender-has-scientific-roots <p>In 2015, the Oxford English Dictionary<a href="https://public.oed.com/blog/december-2015-update-new-words-notes/"> </a><a href="https://public.oed.com/blog/december-2015-update-new-words-notes/">added the word “cisgender”</a> to its ever-evolving listing. It defines the adjective as “designating a person whose sense of personal identity and gender corresponds to his or her sex at birth” and is contrasted with “transgender.”</p> Fri, 12 Nov 2021 17:15:12 +0000 Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. 8920 at /oss /oss/article/did-you-know/bears-dont-hibernate <p>Bears <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear#Hibernation">do crawl into a cave and essentially sleep away the winter months</a>, but what they’re doing is not hibernating, at least not in the true sense.</p> Tue, 16 Jan 2018 22:06:16 +0000 Ada McVean B.Sc. 6889 at /oss /oss/article/did-you-know/crows-garbage-collectors <p>Let’s crow about crows. They are smart birds. In Australia they have learned to feast on the repugnant cane toads that other animals avoid because of the toxin they secret from from glands above their eyes. Crows are not deterred; they turn the toads over and peck away at the creatures’ neck and feast on their insides. Amazingly, these birds also use sticks as tools to get at food and are intelligent enough to be trainable.</p> Sat, 13 Jan 2018 19:56:46 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 6883 at /oss /oss/article/general-science-health-and-nutrition/you-know-dna-meet-even-more-interesting-molecule <p>I remember being introduced to RNA as a disposable DNA copy with a very short life, a sort of mayfly of the molecular world.</p> <p>RNA was how you got from DNA to protein. It was like a set of instructions printed on the most brittle of papers. It might as well have been the medium through which the <em>Mission: Impossible</em> team got their assignment before it self-destructed. In one word, it was uninteresting.</p> <p>We’re all familiar with DNA. It encodes the machinery that creates living beings. But RNA, its oft-dismissed offspring, is much more fascinating.</p> Fri, 22 Dec 2017 00:44:24 +0000 Jonathan Jarry, MSc 6853 at /oss /oss/article/biology-environment/there-aint-no-cure-summertime-buzz <p>There’s a buzz in the air these days, a loud one. I’m sure you’ve heard it but it could have easily been mistaken for a malfunctioning drone plane stuck in the trees. The sounds of summer are slowly becoming dominated by the mating songs of male Cicadas, as their relatively long lives culminate in a grand finale. And it sure is noisy.</p> Sun, 14 Aug 2016 06:55:45 +0000 Adam Oliver Brown PhD 2351 at /oss