Explorer

A detector from Waterloo, Ontario’s KA Imaging allows for clearer visualization of a patient’s lungs.

The term “bug” is another way of saying something is wrong with our computer or software, but where did the term come from? While many attribute the reference to computer scientist Grace Hopper, this article from Curiosity explains that it dates back to Thomas Edison’s private journals.

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.

Since the deciphering of the honey bee ‘waggle’ in the 1920’s by Karl von Frisch, researchers have been measuring the dance-like form of communication that allows bees to convey direction and distance to a food source. While this observation process was initially manual and time-consuming – requiring humans, protractors, and stopwatches – techniques have evolved with technology. Recently, a team from the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at the Free University of Berlin, Germany

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.

Engineers are constantly taking cues from nature when designing new technologies, and the robotic tentacle arm created by German robotics company, Festo, is a great example.