If snow wasn’t enough; now it’s pothole time

With a near-record snowfall and lengthier winter this year, experts are warning Ottawa residents that they might be facing larger and more aggravating potholes when spring rolls around.
“You will see the difference in the severity of damage – you will find potholes that are bigger and deeper,” said Abd El Halim, professor at Carleton’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “Instead of having two small potholes, they will connect together and become one.”

Biofuels: a solution that became part of the problem

Using plant-based materials for fuel in cars and trucks was until recently heralded as the answer to the need to reduce carbon emissions from petrol and diesel fuels.

But the alarm expressed yesterday by Professor Robert Watson, the government’s highest-ranking environment scientist, that the headlong pursuit of biofuels could accelerate climate change, is the latest in a series of comments from senior figures that have shaken Whitehall.

Both Watson and the former chief scientific officer, Sir David King, have joined the chorus of those calling for a key “sustainability” clause to be introduced to ensure biofuels do not compound the problem by competing for land with staple food crops and speeding up deforestation.

Study: Docking dogs’ tails makes them mean

VICTORIA, British Columbia, March 24 (UPI) — Cutting off a dog’s tail deprives it of communication ability and makes it become more aggressive, Canadian researchers in British Columbia report.

Biologist Tom Reimchen and graduate student Steve Leaver of the University of Victoria used a robotic dog with exchangeable regular and bobbed tails to study 492 dogs’ reactions in the summer of 2006 in off-leash environments, The Times-Colonist, a newspaper in Victoria, reported.

Mushroom fire shouldn’t affect consumers

EDMONTON – There will be plenty of mushrooms in the coming months for barbecuers and pizza lovers, despite a massive weekend fire that wiped out a local mushroom plant, a Safeway spokesman says.

“One plant doesn’t matter that much,” David Ryzebol said from his company’s Calgary office. “It will present only a minor inconvenience for us as we bring in supplies from other sources, and it will have no effect at all on prices.”

Early Saturday morning, fire spread through the roof of the Prairie Mushroom Ltd. plant on Range Road 232, north of the Yellowhead Highway, and the entire wood frame and plywood structure was soon in flames. Up to 80 of the plant’s 115 workers are now out of jobs and the 45,000 kilograms of mushrooms per week the plant would have shipped throughout Alberta and as far west as Vancouver will now have to be obtained from other sources.