Caribou poo 'important baseline' for DNA research

Some hunters in the Northwest Territories are being encouraged to bring home more than just caribou meat when they go on their spring hunts.

It's something most people like Jean Polfus want to avoid: caribou scat — or poop.

"People call me 'The Poop Lady' … Although 'Caribou Poop Lady' is a little bit nicer," she said. 

​Polfus is a student and a researcher, who funnels gum-ball-size caribou droppings into a Ziplock bag because they contain valuable information about the animals' genetic makeup.

Jean Polfus is a student and researcher who is asking hunters in the Sahtu to gather caribou scat to help study the DNA of the Woodland Caribou herd. (CBC)

​"We'll just take a Q-Tip and swab the outside of the pellet once it's warmed up and we will collect the DNA from that," Polfus said.

Each bag someone brings back from a hunting trip earns him or her a $25 gas card.

Woodland Caribou populations are threatened in the Northwest Territories, so the scat samples could help researchers figure out how to save the herds.

​Polfus hopes the samples reveal new details about the Woodland Caribou, specifically if the herds in the Sahtu, a region that runs along the Mackenzie Mountains and includes five communities, have mating caribou that would traditionally graze elsewhere.

"The genetic information as well as the information that people have can be used as important baseline information that can be monitored over time. Especially with different industrial developments that are happening in the Sahtu," she said. 

That's information Polfus — and the hunters — can't wait to dig up.  

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Only in Vancouver? Marijuana oil-infused pizza on the menu

Before this pizza gets baked, it gets baked.

A Vancouver pizzeria is serving up slices with an extra special ingredient — if you're over 18 and have been prescribed marijuana by a doctor.

Anthony Risling explains that at Mega iLL, on Kingsway at Fraser, you can ask the kitchen to add their special ingredient for an extra $10.

"Basically we infuse it through an oil extraction process, where we drizzle the oil onto the pizza and it medicates you when you eat it. It's a little different effect from smoking it. It takes maybe about a half hour for it to activate."

Anthony Risling is fairly certain that Mega iLL, on Kingsway at Fraser, is the only pizzeria in Canada offering THC-infused pies. (CBC)

One customer at Mega iLL told CBC News the added oil has "a little bit of a tangy flavour" but otherwise doesn't have much of a taste on the pizza.

Risling is fairly certain that no one else is Canada is operating a pot-zzeria. He said the idea came from a trip to Cambodia, where a pizzeria called Happy Pizza used a similar process to add THC to the pies.

But the future of Mega iLL's signature product is in limbo, with hew Health Canda rules on medicinal marijuana coming into effect on April 1.

A last-minute federal court injunction is keeping some of the new rules from coming fully into effect, but the final outcome of the case could take the pizza off the menu.

"We'll still be open regardless. We just might not be able to infuse the pizzas anymore," Risling said. "But we will still be open as a pizza place where people can come and medicate here."

Marijuana-infused oil is drizzled on a pizza before it goes in the oven. The special ingredients costs $10 more per order. (CBC)

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Asteroid Chariklo's rings surprise astronomers

Rings have been discovered around an asteroid for the first time to the surprise of astronomers who didn't think asteroids could have rings.

The asteroid Chariklo, which is also considered a minor planet, appears to be encircled by two narrow rings, reported an international team of scientists in a paper published online Wednesday in the journal Nature.

"We weren't looking for a ring and didn't think small bodies like Chariklo had them at all," said Felipe Braga-Ribas of the Observatório Nacional/MCTI in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, lead author of the report, in a statement.

"So the discovery — and the amazing amount of detail we saw in the system — came as a complete surprise!"

Chariklo is the largest of the Centaurs, a group of asteroids orbiting between Saturn and Uranus. Its diameter is about 250 kilometres. In comparison, Lake Ontario is 310 kilometres long and Prince Edward Island is 224 kilometres long.

The two rings, shown in an artist's impression, have been nicknamed Oiapoque and Chui after rivers near the northern and southern ends of Brazil. (L. Calçada/M. Kornmesser/Nick Risinger/ESO)

Chariklo is named after a nymph who was the wife of the centaur Chiron in Greek mythology.

Chariklo's rings were discovered when it passed in front of a star called UCAC4 on June 3, 2013, as viewed from South America. During such an event, called an occultation, the light from the star is temporarily blocked by an object passing in front of it. As researchers viewed the event from seven different telescopes around South America, they noticed two short dips in the star's brightness before and after the occultation.

A comparison of the data from the different telescopes and some calculations revealed that the dips were caused by two rings, one seven and one three kilometres wide, with a nine-kilometre gap in-between. They have been nicknamed Oiapoque and Chuí, two rivers near the northern and southern ends of Brazil

The rings sit 1,000 times closer to Chariklo than the moon does to Earth, said study co-author Uffe Grae Jorgensen of the University of Copenhagen, in a news release from the European Southern Observatory. The ESO runs two of the telescopes used in the study.

The researchers think the rings formed from debris left over from a collision of an object with Chariklo or between two objects orbiting it. That debris was shaped into rings by one or more undiscovered small "shepherd" moons — about a kilometre across — embedded in the rings themselves.

"What we are witnessing is perhaps the unveiling of an object that is in the middle of the same stage of development as the Earth and the moon 4.5 billion years ago, when there was a giant collision between Earth and another planet," Jorgensen said in a news release from the University of Copenhagen.

He added that if the rings eventually gather up into a single moon, it will be about two kilometres in diameter.

Only four other objects in the solar system are known to have rings: The giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

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New pink dwarf planet discovered beyond Pluto and Sedna

Astronomers have discovered a new pink dwarf planet that has the most distant orbit in our solar system.

The discovery suggests there could be thousands of similar planets beyond the known edge of our solar system but within the influence of our sun.

The new dwarf planet, officially named 2012 VP113, is about 450 kilometres in diameter — a little bit less than the length of Lake Michigan.

It never comes closer to the sun than 12 billion kilometres or 80 astronomical units (AU) — that is, 80 times the distance between the sun and the Earth, according to a study published online Wednesday in the journal Nature.

The previous furthest object from the sun was the dwarf planet Sedna, which was found at 78 AU about a decade ago, and named after the mythological Inuit goddess who created the sea creatures of the Arctic.

At that time, astronomers weren't sure whether Sedna was an oddity, a lone resident of a region known as the inner Oort cloud, beyond the Kuiper belt where the dwarf planets Pluto and Eris reside.

After the discovery of VP113, "we're pretty confident now that Sedna's not unique," said Chad Trujillo, an astronomer at the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii and the lead author of the study, in a podcast interview with Nature.

He now thinks there may be many similar objects in the inner Oort cloud, although they rarely come close enough to see with a telescope.

"There could be hundreds of thousands if not more. We don't really know."

VP113 has no common name, unlike Sedna and Pluto, but it has been nicknamed "Biden" after the U.S. vice-president Joe Biden because of its initials, according to a news release from the Carnegie Institution.

VP113 was discovered using the new Dark Energy Camera on the NOAO 4 meter telescope in Chile by Trujillo and Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C. The researchers took photos of the sky about every two hours and looked for objects moving relative to a motionless background of stars.

The new planet appears pink — far less red and shiny than Sedna. Trujillo said researchers don't know what it's made of, but because of its distance from the sun "it must have a lot of ice on its surface."

VP113 and Sedna have similar, elongated orbits suggesting they may be influenced by a huge planet up to 10 times the size of the Earth deep in the Oort cloud. While Sedna can approach closer to the sun than VP113, the dwarf planet's elongated orbits mean there are times when VP113 is closer to the sun than Sedna.

Trujillo said scientists don't know how objects like Sedna and VP113 formed, but the prevailing theory is that they were dragged away from the inner solar system by a star passing close by the sun shortly after the sun was born.

He added, "The really interesting thing about Sedna and VP113 is it sort of shows how little we know about our own solar system."

In this orbit diagram for the outer solar system, the sun and inner planets are at the center. The orbits of the four giant planet Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are shown by purple solid circles. The Kuiper Belt (including Pluto) is shown by the dotted light blue region just beyond the giant planets. Sedna's orbit is shown in orange while 2012 VP113's orbit is shown in red. (Scott S. Sheppard/Carnegie Institution for Science)

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Why Tim Hortons co-founder Ron Joyce is ready to meet with you

Ron Joyce, the co-founder of the Tim Hortons empire, isn't likely to take a meeting with just anyone.

But spend 20 hours doing volunteer work for a good cause and he'll sit down for a talk over a couple of double-doubles, no problem.

Joyce is among the big names who have donated some time to the new website Timeauction.org, where volunteers can sign up to be rewarded for their good deeds.

The website is run by David Wen, who organized an offline volunteer-for-prizes event while studying at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., and set up another in Vancouver.

Believing the idea had big potential, he built a website to attract prospective volunteers across the country and managed to recruit some interesting people who agreed to offer their time as prizes.

"I figured wouldn't it be cool if we were able to auction off (the opportunity) to meet cool people or get great experiences," Wen says.

So far, volunteers can donate their time in exchange for meetings with CBC design gurus Steven and Chris, Toronto Star editor-in-chief Michael Cooke, co-anchor of the BNN show "The Street" Pamela Ritchie, Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman, and a number of other well-connected professionals.

Each meeting has a preset number of volunteer hours needed to be claimed and they're handed out on a first come, first served basis. Wen says he considered awarding the meetings to the highest bidders but had some concerns with that approach after running his offline events.

"What we started to find was that people may bid above their capabilities and it's a real stretch for them to complete the hours, so what we wanted to move towards was having more people win with lesser hours," he says.

"We were also finding that people who were bidding 50 or 60 hours were the ones who had a lot of time and probably were already volunteering anyway, where we want to target people who maybe it's the first time they're volunteering and we get them hooked on giving back to the community."

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Dancing goalie does the Wobble — and goes viral on YouTube

Andrew Loewen dances with the Columbus cheerleaders and mascot between the second and third periods of a recent game. (Ben Dodds/Facebook)

Andrew Loewen can wobble and he won't fall down — even in full goalie equipment.

A video of the Winnipeg native, who plays hockey for the Columbus Cottonmouths, a professional hockey team based in Columbus, Georgia, has gone viral in YouTube.

In it, Loewen is seen shaking his padding just off ice, in the Zamboni tunnel, along with the Columbus cheerleaders and mascot.

The crew's Wobble line dance, to Wobble Baby by V.I.C., happened during the second intermission of a Southern Professional Hockey League game on March 15. It was shot by someone and posted online the next day and has since been viewed more than 600,000 times.

Loewen, 29, posted on Twitter that he can't believe the popularity of the video.

"I've been wobbling during the 2nd int for the past 2 years when backing up at home. I guess no one ever posted it," he wrote.

A clip of the dance even made it to air on Hockey Night in Canada this past Saturday.

Loewen, who attended Vincent Massey Collegiate in Winnipeg, credits his dance classes at the school for his smooth moves.

And he credits being a Canadian kid with the ability to do those moves on skates.

"You kind of get the hang of it and it may look like good talent but it's one of those things where I've been doing it long enough that I've managed to figure out my edges and know how to move with it," he told CBC News in an interview on Monday.

Loewen played for the Neepawa Natives of the Manitoba Junior Hockey League in the 2003-04 and 2004-05 seasons and the MJHL's Winnipeg South Blues in 2005-06.

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Why Tim Hortons co-founder Ron Joyce is ready to meet with you

Ron Joyce, the co-founder of the Tim Hortons empire, isn't likely to take a meeting with just anyone.

But spend 20 hours doing volunteer work for a good cause and he'll sit down for a talk over a couple of double-doubles, no problem.

Joyce is among the big names who have donated some time to the new website Timeauction.org, where volunteers can sign up to be rewarded for their good deeds.

The website is run by David Wen, who organized an offline volunteer-for-prizes event while studying at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., and set up another in Vancouver.

Believing the idea had big potential, he built a website to attract prospective volunteers across the country and managed to recruit some interesting people who agreed to offer their time as prizes.

"I figured wouldn't it be cool if we were able to auction off (the opportunity) to meet cool people or get great experiences," Wen says.

So far, volunteers can donate their time in exchange for meetings with CBC design gurus Steven and Chris, Toronto Star editor-in-chief Michael Cooke, co-anchor of the BNN show "The Street" Pamela Ritchie, Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman, and a number of other well-connected professionals.

Each meeting has a preset number of volunteer hours needed to be claimed and they're handed out on a first come, first served basis. Wen says he considered awarding the meetings to the highest bidders but had some concerns with that approach after running his offline events.

"What we started to find was that people may bid above their capabilities and it's a real stretch for them to complete the hours, so what we wanted to move towards was having more people win with lesser hours," he says.

"We were also finding that people who were bidding 50 or 60 hours were the ones who had a lot of time and probably were already volunteering anyway, where we want to target people who maybe it's the first time they're volunteering and we get them hooked on giving back to the community."

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Dancing goalie does the Wobble — and goes viral on YouTube

Andrew Loewen dances with the Columbus cheerleaders and mascot between the second and third periods of a recent game. (Ben Dodds/Facebook)

Andrew Loewen can wobble and he won't fall down — even in full goalie equipment.

A video of the Winnipeg native, who plays hockey for the Columbus Cottonmouths, a professional hockey team based in Columbus, Georgia, has gone viral in YouTube.

In it, Loewen is seen shaking his padding just off ice, in the Zamboni tunnel, along with the Columbus cheerleaders and mascot.

The crew's Wobble line dance, to Wobble Baby by V.I.C., happened during the second intermission of a Southern Professional Hockey League game on March 15. It was shot by someone and posted online the next day and has since been viewed nearly 600,000 times.

Loewen, 29, posted on Twitter that he can't believe the popularity of the video.

"I've been wobbling during the 2nd int for the past 2 years when backing up at home. I guess no one ever posted it," he wrote.

A clip of the dance even made it to air on Hockey Night in Canada this past Saturday.

Loewen played for the Neepawa Natives of the Manitoba Junior Hockey League in the 2003-04 and 2004-05 seasons and the MJHL's Winnipeg South Blues in 2005-06.

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UFOs sighted in southern Alberta, claims family

A mother and daughter who live on a ranch just outside of Nanton are scratching their heads after a couple of unidentified flying objects flew over their southern Alberta home late last Sunday night.

Sam Martine says she and her daughter were watching TV when they saw two bright lights hovering over a field less than a kilometre away from their home.

Strange lights in the sky over a ranch near Nanton have Sam Martine and her daughter Baylie wondering exactly what it was they saw last Sunday night. (Tim Devlin/CBC)

Martine says when they went out on the porch for a closer look the lights quickly flew towards them, spooking their cattle.

"Then the light just started coming straight at us and it went straight over our house and headed to the northwest behind us," said Martine. "I've never seen anything like that before."

Martine's 14-year-old daughter Baylie tried to take a picture of the objects with her cellphone, but said the camera was acting weird.

"The picture went completely green and later on that night it ended up deleting itself."

Sam Martine was able to get her DSLR camera working, but only got a few photos. They are still not sure what they saw but the story is getting plenty of attention on the internet.

Chris Rutkowski, a science writer who studies UFO reports in Canada, believes there may be a simple explanation.

"The tip offs are the red and blue lights, which are very common in aircraft," said Rutkowski.

Robyn Foret, chair of the education and public outreach committee with the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, agrees.

He says whatever the pair saw probably wasn't related to paranormal activity.

"The shaking of the object or the movement of the object — that looks like a camera with a time exposure that may have been bumped. It looked very sporadic."

While experts aren't convinced this is a UFO, they say sightings in Alberta are quite common.

According to the Canadian UFO Survey, which is co-authored by Rutkowski, there were 1180 sightings in 2013 and more than a hundred of those sightings happened in Alberta.

And this isn't the first time paranormal activity has been reported in Nanton.

"There was a video taken of three lights moving in the sky where three lights were fading and reappearing for quite some time ... also in March — March 29 of 2004 [at] about 9:30 in the evening," said Rutkowski.

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Lucy the runaway emu has been found

It's been nearly a week since he's been on the run, but Lucy the emu is back where he belongs with owner Tim Genner. 

Lucy has a female name but is a male bird. Several years after the emu was named, Genner says, he discovered Lucy was not female, but the name stuck.

Tim Genner shows the beating he took from Lucy as he tried to corral it and get it into a van from the Nanaimo backyard where it was found. (CBC)

The 16-year-old bird escaped from his Cassidy, B.C. farm Sunday when Genner forgot to lock the gate to the bird's pen. Two days later, Lucy was spotted about 20 km north near the Colliery Dam in Nanaimo.

Friday night, Lucy was finally cornered in a backyard near  the Nanaimo campus of  Vancouver Island University.

Genner says that's when the fun started. Trying to wrestle a 70-kilogram emu that kicks like a horse into the back of a van isn't easy. 

"There comes a point where they realize they are in a fight for their life they think," said Genner.  As he wrestled with the bird, Genner took a bit of a beating, suffering numerous bumps and bruises.

Genner says he's learned a valuable lesson.

"Don't get an emu for a pet," he advises.  "If you do, make sure it's very well contained."

Genner had been using the Twitter account @Lucyontheloose​ to help track the bird, which from tweets, appeared to be moving north.

Sunday: Lucy flew the coop.

Monday: No known sightings.

Tuesday: Spotted near Colliery Lake Dam Park, and later spotted near Vancouver Island University

Wednesday - Spotted near Nanaimo Regional General Hospital.

Thursday - Possible emu sounds heard in area of Lost Lake Road near Rutherford Road area.

Twitter user @TheMajorCow published a public Google Map of reported sightings of Lucy: 

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Don't shoot Lucy the runaway emu, pleads owner

He may not be a flight risk, but Lucy, the emu is still on the lam in Nanaimo, B.C.

The 16-year-old bird made a run for freedom Sunday when someone left his pen open. The bird was spotted near Colliery Dam Park Tuesday.

But his owner Tim Genner, says he is most worried the 70-kilogram bird might get caught by the wrong people.

"My biggest concern is conservation officers. Their concern is not conservation. It's to get the animal out of public purview. And that always involves — mostly involves killing them," said Genner.

If he's spotted, owner Genner would prefer people to call the Nanaimo RCMP.

Genner says several years after the bird was named, it was discovered that Lucy was not female, but the name stuck.

Genner has been using the Twitter account @Lucyontheloose​ to help track the bird, which appears to be moving north.

Sunday: Lucy flew the coop.

Monday: No known sightings.

Tuesday: Spotted near Colliery Lake Dam Park, and later spotted near Vancouver Island University

Wednesday - Spotted near Nanaimo Regional General Hospital.

Thursday - Possible emu sounds heard in area of Lost Lake Road near Rutherford Road area.

Twitter user @TheMajorCow published a public Google Map of reported sightings of Lucy: 

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Sony unveils virtual reality headset for PS4

The PlayStation 4 virtual reality headset Project Morpheus is shown on stage as Richard Marks, senior director of research and development at Sony Computer Entertainment America, at the Game Developers Conference 2014 in San Francisco. (Jeff Chiu/Associated Press)

Sony is getting into the virtual reality business.

The Japanese electronics and gaming giant unveiled a prototype virtual reality headset to be used in conjunction with its PlayStation 4 video game console during a Tuesday talk at the Game Developers Conference.

Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios, showed off the slick black-and-white headset at the annual gathering of game designers. He said Sony has been working on the technology for more than three years.

The adjustable device is codenamed Project Morpheus and features a head-mounted display with 1080p resolution and a 90-degree field of view. Sensors built into the headset can track a wearer's head movement in concert with a PS4 camera.

"This prototype is by no means final," said Yoshida. "We will continue to work on this to improve it, but we believe it's a good representation of how PlayStation will deliver VR."

Experience shared on screen

Anton Mikhailov, a senior software engineer working on Project Morpheus, said the current version of the technology must be attached to a PS4 console with a cord that's about 4.5 metres long, and users' virtual perspectives can be simultaneously broadcast on a television screen.

"The experience can be shared, and that's only going to allow it to spread," said Mikhailov. "I think that's going to be the key. Once people see someone else interacting in VR, they're going to want to put it on and try it next."

Mikhailov said users will be able to interact with the virtual world displayed on the headset with the gesture-detecting PlayStation Move controller, as well as the standard DualShock 4. He declined to specify when the headset would be released or how much it would cost.

Demos on 4 games

Project Morpheus will be available for demonstration beginning Wednesday for conference attendees on the conference's expo floor with four games: diving cage simulator The Deep, medieval combat game The Castle, sci-fi dogfighter EVE: Valkyrie and a VR rendition of the stealthy action-adventure title Thief.

While Sony Corp. has released other head-mounted display units, Project Morpheus marks the company's first foray into VR with PlayStation. Sony's headset is similar to the Oculus Rift, a VR device currently in development by the Irvine, California-based startup Oculus VR.

Both devices use head tracking to reduce queasiness when users peek around a virtual landscape, and they look more like ski googles than the bulky gaming helmets of the 1990s that usually left users with headaches.

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Food spoilage? Colour-changing tags keep tabs

A tag the size of a kernel of corn could tell consumers whether a carton of milk has turned sour or package of vegetables has spoiled without opening the container, according to researchers.

Researchers say their "time–temperature indicators" can be programed to track the temperature history of a food or beverage. (American Chemical Society/YouTube)

They presented findings at the 247th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society on Monday in Dallas, showing the tags, when attached to packaging, change colour over time, tracking the "temperature history" of a product.

"This tag, which has a gel-like consistency, is really inexpensive and safe and can be widely programmed to mimic almost all ambient-temperature deterioration processes in foods," said Chao Zhang from Peking University in Beijing.

The tags use metallic nanorods that indicate when food has been unduly exposed to higher temperatures, which could cause unexpected spoilage.

"In our configuration, red, or reddish orange, would mean fresh," Zhang said. "Over time, the tag changes its colour to orange, yellow and later green, which indicates the food is spoiled."

"The colours signify a range between 100 per cent fresh and 100 per cent spoiled," the American Chemical Society (ACS) said in a report on the research.

"For example, if the label says that the product should remain fresh for 14 days under refrigeration, but the tag is now orange, it means that the product is only roughly half as fresh. In that case, the consumer would know the product is edible for only another seven days if kept refrigerated," the ACS said

The suggestion is that the tags could more more reliable than expiration dates if food is left exposed to higher temperatures before it's sold.

The tags take into account temperature fluctuations that would spoil a product before its expiration date, the ACS said in a video presentation on the technology.

The researchers started with milk, but say the tags can be customized for a range of foods and beverages, and even medicine. They're also cheap, costing only a fifth of a penny each.

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Housing crunch puts tradespeople in shipping containers

The CanStay Motel, made out of converted shipping containers, is housing tradespeople who have had difficulty finding affordable rental units in the small but booming city of Estevan, Sask.

The unique motel sits in a farmers field west of Estevan. Each 40 foot-long sea-can has been adapted into two rooms, each with a door, window, bed, television, kitchenette, and private bathroom with a shower. There are 15 bachelor units in all.

Logan Kirk, 27, is a pipe-fitter from Regina and was relieved to find an affordable motel near his work site, the Boundary Dam.

'It's small, but comfy'- Logan Kirk

"The other places were anywhere from $1500 a month, to $2000 a month. So, a lot more affordable," said Kirk, who is paying $1,050 per month for his unit. "It's small, but comfy...it has pretty much everything that I like in a place to stay."

Estevan has grappled with a chronic housing shortage for several years. The influx of people working in the oil and gas industry far exceeded the city's rental capacity.

A Lego-like solution

Two years ago, the Bryson family decided to get into the housing business, but were reluctant to build a motel.

Theo Bryson and his parents were watching CBC's Dragon's Den and saw the Saskatoon company 3twenty Modular show how it converts steel shipping containers into houses. Bryson's investment was roughly $30,000 dollars per motel room.

"These units are a little bit more than the wood ones, but the selling point for us was movability," Bryson said. "If anything changes in the Estevan area, we can easily move the units anywhere we want." 

Bryson was also impressed at how quickly they were able to assemble the motel. 3twenty Modular manufactured and delivered the units in less than two months.

"It was actually harder to line up a trucker to ship them down than for them to build them," says Bryson.

In Saskatoon, the company's CEO, Bryan McCrea, confirms that he has received a number of inquires from affordable housing agencies and First Nations in Saskatchewan that are also eager to find solutions to their own housing crises.

Started by students

The company was founded by University of Saskatchewan students who had brainstormed a solution for student housing shortages. However, since its inception, 3twenty Modular has mostly focused on converting sea-cans into workforce housing for mining, oil and gas companies in northern Saskatchewan and Alberta. In those cases, bedroom prices range from $15,000 to $90,000 depending on the amenities.

But last year the Department of National Defense contracted them to build a 180 -person apartment complex for its airforce base in Alberta. They did it in 59 days

"Basically we can build any building with containers...apartments, condos, even townhouses," said Evan Willoughby, engineer and co-founder of 3twenty Modular. "I think there's a future there. We'd just have to do it right." 

3twenty Modular CEO Bryan McCrea has already studied how shipping cans could be adapted to serve remote First Nations communities, but hasn't committed to any construction projects yet.

"Longer term, we can really utilize the durability of our structures and ease of installation and eventually get into on-reserve housing for the Aboriginal marketplace as well," he said. 

Would you live in an apartment made from a shipping container?

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Food spoilage? Colour-changing tags keep tabs

A tag the size of a kernel of corn could tell consumers whether a carton of milk has turned sour or package of vegetables has spoiled without opening the container, according to researchers.

Researchers say their "time–temperature indicators" can be programed to track the temperature history of a food or beverage. (American Chemical Society/YouTube)

They presented findings at the 247th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society on Monday in Dallas, showing the tags, when attached to packaging, change colour over time, tracking the "temperature history" of a product.

"This tag, which has a gel-like consistency, is really inexpensive and safe and can be widely programmed to mimic almost all ambient-temperature deterioration processes in foods," said Chao Zhang from Peking University in Beijing.

The tags use metallic nanorods that indicate when food has been unduly exposed to higher temperatures, which could cause unexpected spoilage.

"In our configuration, red, or reddish orange, would mean fresh," Zhang said. "Over time, the tag changes its colour to orange, yellow and later green, which indicates the food is spoiled."

"The colours signify a range between 100 per cent fresh and 100 per cent spoiled," the American Chemical Society (ACS) said in a report on the research.

"For example, if the label says that the product should remain fresh for 14 days under refrigeration, but the tag is now orange, it means that the product is only roughly half as fresh. In that case, the consumer would know the product is edible for only another seven days if kept refrigerated," the ACS said

The suggestion is that the tags could more more reliable than expiration dates if food is left exposed to higher temperatures before it's sold.

The tags take into account temperature fluctuations that would spoil a product before its expiration date, the ACS said in a video presentation on the technology.

The researchers started with milk, but say the tags can be customized for a range of foods and beverages, and even medicine. They're also cheap, costing only a fifth of a penny each.

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200 dolphins surround Royal Canadian Marine SAR in Howe Sound

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Volunteer search and rescue members with the West Vancouver unit were conducting a training exercise

CBC News Posted: Mar 14, 2014 9:58 PM PT Last Updated: Mar 15, 2014 7:02 AM PT

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Volunteers with Royal Canadian Marine Search and Rescue in West Vancouver, B.C., had a wild encounter during a training mission in Howe Sound on Thursday.

Some 200 dolphins surrounded the unit's boat and began jumping through its wake. The SAR members say they are used to seeing the odd whale or dolphin while out at sea, but never a pod this large. 

The unit managed to capture their experience on camera. Click the video above to see more.

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Convicted fisherman technically not allowed in own backyard

Carson Tulk was ordered to stay at least 50 metres away from any inland waters for five years after he was convicted for netting salmon. (CBC)

A man from central Newfoundland convicted last month of netting salmon says the punishment handed down was too harsh.

Carson Tulk, of Stoneville, was also convicted of obstructing a Department of Fisheries and Oceans fisheries guardian.

Tulk was fined $6,000 and was banned from recreational fishing for life. He must stay at least 50 metres away from any inland waters for five years.

According to Tulk, the court order is proving difficult to deal with.

"I lives right into the mouth of the brook … like I said I'm only 300 feet [91 metres] from inland waters right … right on the borderline, not allowed out in me garden by rights," he said.

He said he understands the conviction, but the courts are making an example out of him to deter other people.

"They got right strict on that stuff, right? So I mean, drunk drivers get off with nothing, I got penalized for five years," Tulk said.

Tulk said he's allowed to be near fresh water if he's travelling by vehicle, like driving over a bridge, but isn't allowed on the water in a boat.

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