On the island of Laeso in Denmark, one man is reviving the lost art of eelgrass thatching and, in doing so, bringing attention to a plant that has great potential

Newfoundland filmmaker Justin Simms is releasing his latest film called Sons. It was prompted by the birth of his son and left him wondering how traditional masculine behaviour is learned.

A woman who says she was repeatedly denied emergency care last spring is blasting the Newfoundland and Labrador health-care system, saying she’s been left psychologically scarred after being told several times that her gangrenous appendix was simply anxiety or constipation.

Volunteers will be cutting hair at a salon based inside a Cape Breton food bank. The goal is to provide clients with the same salon experience paying customers would receive.

About a thousand people stood solemnly in the rain at a cenotaph in downtown Halifax on Monday morning to pay tribute to veterans on Remembrance Day.

Building highways isn't the only solution to the growing problem of traffic congestion in and around the Halifax Regional Municipality, says the head of an organization that advocates for rail-based public transit.

The Société de transport de Montréal (STM) has established a non-urgent text line for transit users to signal security issues in the Metro network.

To understand the circuitry of the brain, it is often advantageous to visualize the processes of a single neuron or population of neurons. Identifying sites where a neuron, or neurons, originates and where it projects can allow a researcher to begin to map the circuitry underlying various processes, including sensory-guided behaviors. Furthermore, neural tracing allows one to map locations where processes terminate onto regions of the brain that may have known functions and sometimes to identify candidate upstream or downstream connections, based on proximity. Many methods of neural tracing are available; here, we focus on loading fluorescent dyes into a neuron (fluorescent dye filling). Different options for dyes exist to label neurites. Among the most versatile and easy to use are dextran amine–conjugated dyes. They fill neurons bidirectionally, not discriminating between anterograde or retrograde loading direction. Dye filling must be done in unfixed tissue, as the dye needs to move through the neurons; however, dextran amine conjugates are aldehyde-fixable and once cells have been fully loaded with dye the tissue can be fixed and subjected to immunostaining. Coupling neural tracing with immunofluorescence is a useful way to determine specific brain or ventral nerve cord (VNC) regions where a neuron projects. This protocol describes methods for loading dextran amine conjugated dyes into a sensory tissue in the mosquito to visualize sites of sensory neuron innervation in the central nervous system, as well as efferent projections to these structures. This protocol is described for Aedes aegypti, for which it was optimized, but it also works across a variety of insects.

The Drosophila embryonic central nervous system has been used for decades as a model for understanding the genetic regulation of axon guidance and other aspects of neural development. Foundational studies using antibody staining to examine the embryonic ventral nerve cord in wild-type and mutant animals led to the discovery of evolutionarily conserved genes that regulate fundamental aspects of axon guidance, including midline crossing of axons. The development of the regular, segmentally repeating structure of axon pathways in the ventral nerve cord can illustrate basic principles of axon guidance to beginning students and can also be used by expert researchers to characterize new mutants, detect genetic interactions between known genes, and precisely quantify variations in gene function in engineered mutant lines. Here, we describe a protocol for collecting and fixing Drosophila embryos and visualizing axon pathways in the embryonic ventral nerve cord using immunofluorescence or immunohistochemical staining methods. As embryogenesis in Drosophila takes ~24 h to complete, a 1-d collection yields embryos representing all stages of development from newly fertilized through ready-to-hatch larvae, allowing investigation of multiple developmental events within a single batch of collected embryos. The methods described in this protocol should be accessible to introductory laboratory courses as well as seasoned investigators in established research laboratories.

Mosquitoes take blood meals from a diverse range of host animals and their host associations vary by species. Characterizing these associations is an important element of the transmission dynamics of mosquito-vectored pathogens. To characterize mosquito host associations, various molecular techniques have been developed, which are collectively referred to as blood meal analysis. DNA barcoding has diverse biological applications and is well-suited to mosquito blood meal analysis. The standard DNA barcoding marker for animals is a 5' fragment of the cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) gene. A major advantage of this marker is its taxonomic coverage in DNA sequence reference databases, making it feasible to identify a wider range of mosquito host species than with any other gene. However, the COI gene contains high sequence variation at potential priming sites between vertebrate orders. Coupled with the need for primer sequences to be mismatched with mosquito priming sites so that annealing to mosquito DNA is inhibited, it can be difficult to design primers suitable for blood meal analysis applications. Several primers are available that perform well in mosquito blood meal analysis, annealing to priming sites for most vertebrate host taxa, but not to those of mosquitoes. Because priming site sequence variation among vertebrate taxa can cause amplification to fail, a hierarchical approach to DNA barcoding-based blood meal analysis can be applied. In such an approach, no single primer set is expected to be effective for 100% of potential host species. If amplification fails in the initial reaction, a subsequent reaction is attempted with primers that anneal to different priming sites, and so on, until amplification is successful.

Mosquito species vary in their host associations. Although some species are relative generalists, most specialize, to varying extents, on particular types of host animals. Mosquito host associations are among the most important factors that influence the transmission dynamics of mosquito-vectored pathogens, and understanding these associations can provide insight on how such pathogens move within ecosystems. Characterization of the host associations of mosquito species requires applying blood meal analysis to the largest possible sample size of mosquito blood meals. Processing large samples of mosquito blood meals can be time-consuming, especially when chain-termination sequencing is used, necessitating individual processing of each specimen. Various methods and commercially available kits and products are available for extracting DNA from mosquito blood meals. The hot sodium hydroxide and Tris (HotSHOT) method is a rapid and inexpensive method of DNA extraction that is compatible with the recovery of DNA from mosquito blood meals preserved on QIAcard Flinders Technology Associates (FTA) Classic Cards (FTA cards). FTA cards allow nucleic acids found in blood meals to be preserved easily, even in field conditions. DNA prepared using this method is suitable for polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based blood meal analysis.

A Two-Day Festival in the historic Arts & Industries Building brings community, artists and scholars together for a “Culture Lab”

More than 50 Norman Wells residents gathered at the Royal Canadian Legion on Thursday night to voice frustrations over high heating fuel prices.

A Whitehorse homeowner has been charged in connection with an explosion last year that destroyed his home and killed a man in a neighbouring house. 

In the Jim Crow South, activists became martyrs at the hands of white racists, all for the just cause of using the vote to fight for equality and freedom

A Romare Bearden print served as a starting point for the American playwright's 1987 drama, which follows a Black family's struggle to decide the fate of an ancestral heirloom

Families of Norton Elementary School won’t be seeing their kids return anytime soon. Repairs are going to take longer than expected and students are expected to be back in the school by the start of the next school year.

A Fredericton judge suggested a joint sentencing proposal Tuesday was too lenient in the case of a former peace officer who left a loaded gun in the house while his children were home.

Hospice Northwest Services is inviting people to visit its third annual photography exhibit, "A Personal Lens on Grief." Here's what the project in Thunder Bay, Ont., entails, and why staff say it's important to find creative ways to express loss.

Serving in West and Central Asia for many years, Paul and Soonok have one lasting dream: to see a church planting movement there.

Roughly 30 percent of Catalonia is protected land making it a stunning place to hit the trails

Trevor Lewis was a corporal in the Canadian Armed Forces who tried to bury the memories from his deployment in Afghanistan. They all came back in 2021 after the fall of Kabul. This story is how he made peace with his time in that country.

The entrepreneur and financial adviser defeated Adam Bassett for the party nomination in Egmont after two days of voting last week. 

There is a sign of progress in the effort toward four-laning the final section of Highway 69 that links northern Ontario to the southern part of the province, and improving the safety of the heavily-travelled route.

A Métis pad saddle from the early 1800s is on display at the Cantonal Museum of Archaeology and History in Lausanne, Switzerland, sitting alongside contemporary beadwork created by other Red River Métis artists. 

A missing 26-year-old Sagkeeng First Nation man has been found dead in the community of Fort Alexander, about 100 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg, Powerview RCMP say. Christian Letander's body was found Monday near the Winnipeg River.

Winnipeg police are investigating the death of a 23-year-old man who was fatally injured in Winnipeg on Friday.  

Over the weekend, RCMP says officers searched for answers in the death of the toddler, knocking door-to-door on Saturday in Ashern and the surrounding communities of Gypsumville as they canvassed for information that may shed light on the timeline surrounding the child's death.

StandardAero says new funding from the provincial and federal governments will help expand its Winnipeg operations by training more specialized technicians, managers, support personnel and engineers.

City will wait for legal advice, staff report before voting early next year to avoid potential rights violations. While some people in the community argue Hamilton doesn't have enough shelter beds to justifiably remove encampments, others say they feel unsafe in their homes and unable to access parks.

Ontario's Minister of Education has announced she will audit discretionary spending of all school boards in the province after reports of expensive trips by board officials in recent months.

CPL commissioner Mark Noonan says the league is in discussions with groups in Edmonton, Laval, Que., Kelowna, B.C., Kitchener, Waterloo and Windsor, Ont., Quebec City, Saskatoon and the Toronto area.

Waterloo region’s food landscape is more than farm stands and restaurants. There's a vast array of food producers, food makers and organizations that make up the food scene. And now, a new directory aims to make them easier to find. CBC KW's food columnist Jasmine Mangalaseril explored the directory.

Malloree Enoch alleges she was sexually coerced by former Whitecaps coach Hubert Busby Jr., who was recently reinstated as head coach of the Jamaican women's national team.

A Penticton city councillor who was arrested and charged with historical sexual offences this summer is facing new charges after more victims were identified, say police in Sarnia, Ont.

The National Capital Commission says it opened the Rideau Canal Skateway below its usual stands for ice thickness a few times last season — and plans to do the same this year. 

The figure skating Grand Prix Final next week has been cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic for the second season in a row. The Dec. 9-12 event in Osaka, Japan, was the only global event matching the best skaters across all four disciplines before the Winter Olympics in Beijing in February.

Two-time Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu nearly became the first skater to land a quadruple axel while easily outpacing Shoma Uno and Yumi Kagayami to win the Japanese national championship on Sunday.

Windsor's push to tax people that own houses that sit empty in a city dealing with an affordable housing crunch has led to some surprising early results.

Lawyer David McMillan alleges the mayor owes him payment for services provided between 2021 and 2024.

A Syilx Okanagan woman has filed a lawsuit against church authorities and the Canadian government alleging she was physically and sexually abused as a child at a Catholic-run Vernon, B.C., school.

Investor pricing reveals expectations for rates, dividends, and inflation.