June in Canadian science

June’s SIN Newsletter, covering science and technology news in Canada, is out! Click here to download the PDF version. If you would like to be added to the mailing list and receive it automatically in your inbox, leave a comment below or send us an e-mail.

This is John Preece assisting Nicole Arbour on the SIN newsletter and blog. Some highlights from June’s news are:

STIC State of the Nation report released | Every two years, Canada’s Science, Technology and Innovation Council (STIC) releases a comprehensive review of Canada’s innovation performance against a number of international metrics. The 2010 report concludes that low business investment in R&D has contributed to general stagnation and a fall in global rankings, but that Canada is in a good position to move forward.

Stem cell promises come to fore | Toronto recently hosted the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) conference, which brought together over 3500 of the world’s leading scientists in the field. Regenerative medicine has the potential to revolutionise treatments, and is advancing rapidly.

First sale for quantum computing | British Columbia’s D-Wave recently sold the world’s first quantum computer, but (appropriately) there is still some uncertainty about how it actually works. Quantum computers can, in theory, perform parallel calculations in seconds that conventional computers would take decades to chug through in series.

Caribou in oilsands region doomed under Alberta land-use plan | Under the government’s environmental and conservation plans for Alberta’s oilsands, eleven caribou herds will be effectively wiped out in the Athabasca region.

Where will our energy come from in 2030? | The Equinox Summit at the University of Waterloo recently convened to figure out how we are going to create a sustainable energy future for the 7 billion people we’ll have in 2030, without completely wrecking the ecosystem.

Upping the anti: Canadian researchers instrumental in game-changing antimatter study | An international team at CERN has succeeded in trapping antihydrogen for over 16 minutes, beating the previous record by a factor of 5000. These techniques will allow further study of one of the least-understood aspects of our universe.

Remember that you can also keep up with Canadian science news on the UKinCanada Delicious feed, and with us and the rest of the UKinCanada team on Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and YouTube. See you next month!