Four Western researchers were named Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada (RSC), commonly recognized as the country’s top honour in the arts, humanities and sciences.
Research
Did meteorite impacts help create life on Earth and beyond?
What if impact craters, long seen as harbingers of death, turned out to be the cradle of life? A new study co-authored at Western suggests we rethink the origins of life on Earth.
Musicians’ health measures ‘new for everybody’
Soprano Adriana Orozco Burbano practises an aria while wearing her facemask – one of many health precautions adopted at Western’s Don Wright Faculty of Music this fall.
Researchers unravel two COVID-19 mysteries
A team from Lawson Health Research Institute and Western University has made significant strides in understanding COVID-19 – including discovering a way to predict how sick a patient will become – through two studies published this week.
Mindfulness study promotes calmer, more caring classrooms
A unique mindfulness program developed at Western has led to greater empathy and self-regulation among kindergarten children.
Research touts lower-cost, longer-life battery
New materials engineering research led by Western could translate into significant real-world benefits like greater range for electric vehicles and longer battery life for cell phones.
Feds fund innovative Western research
Researchers looking to develop green technologies, understand consumer decision-making and improve learning outcomes for children with autism are among those benefiting from new federal funding.
‘Smart walker’ helps prevent falls
Wagner Souza, has combined experience with neuroscience to create ‘smart’ medical devices, including a fall-prevention walker.
Advocate pushes for child-welfare change
PhD candidate Jane Kovarikova has formed a group lobbying for child-welfare policy changes.
Sparrows’ storm stress a harbinger of climate-change impact
Sparrows show increased stress when exposed to more numerous and more severe winter storms, says a Western study that tested the songbirds’ resilience to the effects of climate change.
Youth vaping problem nets research dollars
Vaping among teenaged Canadians has doubled in the past two years – a troubling trend that three Western researchers will examine in depth with new funding from the CIHR.
Ancient beavers cut trees for food first, not to build dams
By studying the wood-cutting behaviour of ancient beavers that once roamed the Canadian high Arctic, an international team of scientists has discovered that tree predation – feeding on trees and harvesting wood – evolved in these now-extinct rodents long before dam-building.
Early Mars was covered in ice sheets, not flowing rivers
A large number of the valley networks scarring Mars’ surface were carved by water melting beneath glacial ice -not by free-flowing rivers as previously thought – a new Western-led study shows.
Medical Innovation Fellows to generate new solutions
Western has recruited some of the top PhD graduates, medical students and residents from across the country to be part of the sixth cohort of its Medical Innovation Fellowship (MIF) program.
Grasping the world is not the same as understanding it
When humans reach out and grab things, we don’t rely on the same visual cues we use to perceive an object’s size, a new study from Western’s Brain and Mind Institute shows.
Poor sleep quality linked to multiple chronic conditions
Researchers at Western University’s Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry have shown that how well you sleep and for how long is linked to increased odds of living with multiple chronic conditions.
Grants awarded for COVID-19 research in child, brain health
Two Western researchers are among six interdisciplinary project teams awarded Manulife CIFAR Population Health and Wellbeing grantsto study the long-term health effects of COVID-19.
Mobility, healthy aging the aim of Gray Research Chair
A gift from William and Lynne Gray has created a first-in-Canada research chair in mobility and aging.
Machine learning predicts satisfaction in romantic relationships
The most reliable predictor of a relationship’s success is partners’ belief that the other person is fully committed, a Western-led research team has found.
Engineering researchers receive COVID-related grants
Two Western researchers have received funding for partnership research projects that will help understand and prevent the spread of COVID-19. The COVID Alliance Grants awarded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) support pandemic-fighting...