Explorer

Last summer, the Canada Science and Technology Museum offered up access to its collection so that researcher Jennifer Thivierge could study “keypunch girls” — the women who punched holes in data cards and fed them into machines or tabulators, starting in the 1950s. The University of Ottawa’s Gazette writes about her findings, and what they say about gender discrimination within the field of computer science.

You don’t need to travel all the way to Amsterdam to see the Anne Frank House. The museum recently launched a 25-minute virtual reality tour that takes you through the rooms—hidden behind an Amsterdam canal-side house—where Anne wrote her diary. Read the full article and watch a trailer for the virtual reality tour.

Researchers at MIT and the Max Planck Institute have developed a method for quick, on-site E. coli detection in food. While current food safety testing either requires days to complete or expensive equipment, this new method, paired with a smartphone and QR code, will make testing inexpensive and portable. The new detection process uses Janus emulsions, droplets consisting of two hemispheres of different densities. In water, the less dense, hydrocarbon hemisphere sits above the denser hemisphere

The Avro Arrow –a triumph of aerospace achievement in Canadian history. Launched in 1953, the Avro Arrow project was innovative for the times as the most advanced and fastest interceptor aircraft.