News

Shawn McCarthy from the Globe and Mail visited the Grand River with our team in early November to talk about our research and its implications for the local watershed as well as Great Lakes.  The article in the newspaper highlighted the improvements in the river resulting from the investments made in wastewater treatment by the local communities.

Our recent paper (Xu Zhang, Mark R. Servos, and Juewen Liu, Surface Science of DNA Adsorption onto Citrate-Capped Gold Nanoparticles. Langmuir 2012. 28 (8), 3896-3902. doi: 10.1021/la205036p) was selected as one of the most important Langmuir articles published over its history; “seminal advances that the Langmuir editors consider to have had the most influence in the community of surface science and colloid science that the journal was founded to serve”.

Vancouver Sun B.C. community looks to remove traces of drugs from water. One third of Canadian drinking water samples contain traces of pharmaceuticals from municipal sewage. By Randy Shore, November 12, 2014.http://www.vancouversun.com/health/community+looks+remove+traces+drugs+from+water/10375508/story.html

Congratulations biology graduate student Shari Cater on receiving the Dr. Richard Playle Award for Outstanding MSc Thesis in Aquatic Toxicology for her work on “Historical trends of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans in fish and sediment associated with two bleached kraft pulp mills in northern Ontario”.

CBC interview on impacts of drugs on fish and drinking water.http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/drinking-water-contaminated-by-excreted-drugs-a-growing-concern-1.2772289

The University of Waterloo has launched a new collaborative graduate program in water supported by RBC. Mark Servos will serve as the inaugural Program Director.  http://www.therecord.com/news-story/3255173-university-of-waterloo-launches-water-program-with-rbc/

In Mark Servos’s biology department lab, waders and long-handled nets compete for space with a mass spectrometer. Servos, an eco-toxicologist and holder of the Canada Research Chair in Water Quality Protection, explains that he researches the impact of contaminants on aquatic life at levels “from gene expression all the way up to whole communities of fish.”

Mark Servos of the University of Waterloo explains how male fish in the Grand River are exhibiting female traits.

WATERLOO REGION — A local researcher says sewage from the region’s waste water treatment plants is making male fish female in the Grand River.