Tech

Do children learning French as a second language see benefits from reading bilingual French-English children's books?

A study recently published in the journal Language and Literacy found that bilingual books, which are not often used in French immersion classrooms, are seen by students as an effective tool for second language learning.

To find out more on this topic, we spoke with the co-author of the paper, Joël Thibeault, Assistant Professor of French education at uOttawa's Faculty of Education.

What is the topic of your research?

New research, just published in the journal Ringing & Migration, has used state of the art tracking technology to investigate how one of Britain's largest ducks, the Shelduck, interacts with offshore wind turbines during their migration across the North Sea.

Their findings reveal - for the first time - the length, speed and flight heights of this journey.

TORONTO, ON - Research by a team of chemists at the University of Toronto, led by Nobel Prize-winning researcher John Polanyi, is shedding new light on the behaviour of molecules as they collide and exchange atoms during chemical reaction. The discovery casts doubt on a 90-year old theoretical model of the behavior of the "transition state", intermediate between reagents and products in chemical reactions, opening a new area of research.

When Steamboat Geyser, the world's tallest, started erupting again in 2018 in Yellowstone National Park after decades of relative silence, it raised a few tantalizing scientific questions. Why is it so tall? Why is it erupting again now? And what can we learn about it before it goes quiet again?

Forest landscape restoration is attaining new global momentum this year under the Decade of Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030), an initiative launched by the United Nations. Burkina Faso, in West Africa, is one country that already has a head start in forest landscape restoration, and offers valuable lessons. An assessment of achievements there and in other countries with a history of landscape restoration is critical to informing a new wave of projects aiming for more ambitious targets that are being developed thanks to renewed global interest and political will to improve the environment.

Label-free optical sensors based on optical whispering-gallery-mode (WGM) microresonators exhibit extraordinary sensitivity for detecting physical, chemical, and biological entities, even down to single molecules. This extreme advancement in label-free optical detection is made possible by application of the optical microresonator, i.e. a 100 um glass microspheres, as optical cavity to enhance the detection signal.

Universal fault-tolerant quantum computing relies on the implementation of quantum error correction. An essential milestone is the achievement of error-corrected logical qubits that genuinely benefit from error correction, outperforming simple physical qubits. Although tremendous efforts have been devoted to demonstrate quantum error correcting codes with different quantum hardware, previous realizations are limited to be against certain types of errors or to prepare special logical states.

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) and millimeter-wave (mmWave) are two crucial techniques of 5G to meet the explosive capacity demands. On the other hand, UAVs deployed as aerial base stations are potential to provide ubiquitous coverage and satisfy users' multifarious requirements due to their flexibility and mobility. Nevertheless, the finite onboard energy is a fundamental limit of UAVs, which can deter the performance of UAV communication networks.

A new study in Nicotine & Tobacco Research, published by Oxford University Press, finds that the use of high-strength nicotine e-cigarettes can help adults with schizophrenia spectrum disorders quit smoking.

When scientists at the Institute of Science and Technology (IST) Austria looked at developing zebrafish embryos, they observed an abrupt and dramatic change: within just a few minutes, the solid-like embryonic tissue becomes fluid-like. What could cause this change and, what is its role in the further development of the embryo? In a multidisciplinary study published in the journal Cell, they found answers that could change how we look at key processes in development and disease, such as tumor metastasis.

Finding the best materials for tomorrow's electronics is the goal of Professor Emanuele Orgiu of the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS). Among the materials in which Professor Orgiu is interested, some are made of molecules that can conduct electricity. He has demonstrated the role played by molecular vibrations on electron conductivity on crystals of such materials.

Researchers at the University of Surrey have found that non-invasive skin swab samples may be enough to detect COVID-19.

The most widely used approach to testing for COVID-19 requires a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, which involves taking a swab of the back of the throat and far inside the nose.

Nanograined metals and alloys, whose grain size is less than 100 nm, exhibit extremely high strength and high ductility, possessing excellent mechanical properties. Nanograined materials, however, have a large number of grain boundaries and hence high total grain boundary energy. At a temperature higher than a critical temperature, grains in nanograined materials will grow spontaneously to reduce the grain boundary energy, leading to thermal instability of the materials.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a well-studied neurodegenerative disorder that affects between 7 and 10 million people worldwide. Despite PD being a recurrent topic in the medical literature for over 200 years, its mechanisms are largely unclear, and existing treatments are aimed at improving the patient's symptoms.

Superconductivity is a complete loss of electrical resistance. Superconductors are not merely very good metals: it is a fundamentally different electronic state. In normal metals, electrons move individually, and they collide with defects and vibrations in the lattice. In superconductors, electrons are bound together by an attractive force, which allows them to move together in a correlated way and avoid defects.