Browse "Science & Technology"

W.D. Lawrence, 2548 ton square-rigged sailing ship built in 1874 in Maitland, NS. It was designed and built by William Dawson Lawrence, who earned substantial profits from the ship until 1883, when he sold it to a Norwegian.

Although the term SOLID WASTE refers to a wide range of discarded materials (from kitchen scraps to mine tailings), the component known as refuse has the greatest potential for environmental contamination.

The "3Rs Hierarchy of Waste Management" encourages people to reduce, reuse and recycle before considering other options for solid waste management. Reduction is at the top of the hierarchy because reducing waste (not creating waste in the first place) is the most efficient way to handle waste.

Water Distribution System, a provincially regulated network used to distribute water from a central location to a location of end use.

Water pollution occurs when discharges of energy or materials degrade the quality of water for other users, including both humans and wildlife. Pollution can affect inland waters such as lakes, rivers and groundwater, as well as coastal marine waters.

Water Treatment, the physical and chemical processes used to ensure water's quality for its intended use. Minimum standards for drinking water are set by environmental agencies while industries have their own guidelines.

These organisms usually occur in water contaminated with sewage (eg, especially bird and mammal excrement) or by infected persons or animals.

WEATHER FORECASTING is the attempt to understand atmospheric patterns to predict the weather conditions that will occur at a specific place and time, including temperature, wind, cloud, precipitation and humidity.

Most modern meteorologists attempt to cope with physical processes by expressing them mathematically, ie, by creating mathematical models of the atmosphere. Powerful computers are then used to solve problems.

Weather modification has been used in an attempt to increase rainfall and snowfall, to suppress hail, to clear fogs, to modify tropical cyclones and to suppress lightning. The term "weather modification" is not normally used to describe inadvertent changes in our WEATHER.

   Weather in Canada ranges from the extreme cold of the Arctic to tornadoes and other severe weather in the southern regions; from the storms and fog of the Atlantic to the dry heat and majestic thunderstorms of the prairies.

Weights and measures are terms which traditionally referred to standards of mass (or weight), length and volume. Over the past few thousand years such standards have frequently been introduced throughout the world for trading and tax purposes.

West Nile VIRUS, a member of the flavivirus family, is related to the viruses that cause dengue and yellow fevers. The effects of infection with West Nile virus range from no symptoms to severe illness and even death.

THEY'LL SOON be here, riding the warm currents of summer: MOSQUITOES armed with the latest bioweapon - the West Nile VIRUS. Short of building a concrete bunker or setting up an unhealthy fog of repellent spray, there are ways of safeguarding the pasty flesh of Canuckus winterus.

The White Pass & Yukon Route railway was built to meet the demand for transportation to the gold fields of the Yukon River basin during the Klondike Gold Rush. Completed in 1900, it was a feat of engineering and one of the steepest railways in North America. It ran 177 km from Skagway, Alaska, to Whitehorse, Yukon. Today, tourist rail excursions run on a portion of the original line.

The battle between doctors and patients’ families has only just begun

 The first European explorers and settlers in North America found wildlife in abundance. This wealth was recognized as having immediate commercial value, with FISHERIES and the FUR TRADE being the first widespread exploitive activities.

A wildlife preserve is an area of land or water set aside from at least some forms of development or recreational use, particularly from industrial use, hunting and motorized recreation, to protect wildlife and their habitats.

The more pronounced the air movement (wind or moving air produced by walking, skiing or riding in a convertible) and the greater the temperature difference between the surface of the object and the air, the greater the heat loss.