For Michael Houston, PhD ’93, BSc ’87, the University of Waterloo is more than his alma mater. For a good chunk of his youth, the campus is where he called home.
When it comes to hibernation, conserving resources is key for an animal’s survival. For bats of Western North America, water may be the key to assessing a bat species’ ability to thrive during hibernation.
New research that comes as part of a larger project to understand the potential impact of white-nose syndrome in the West found that bats are adept at finding similar hibernation conditions across their large geographic ranges, despite a variety of climates in these areas.
To a scientist, trial and error is common in laboratories to refine new tests and methods, and look for potential problems on the small scale. But what happens when these techniques are meant for human tissues, such as for surgeries, medical tests, and treatments, where multiple different trials are not possible?