Global Research Partnerships

When prompted to create images of female and male bodies, artificial intelligence platforms overwhelmingly reproduce and amplify narrow western body ideals, a University of Toronto study has found. The study, published recently in the journal Psychology of Popular Media, involved prompting three different AI platforms – Midjourney, DALL-E and Stable Diffusion – to create images of female and male bodies, including those of athletes. The results came as little surprise. "In a systematic coding...

Chemical engineering researchers at the University of Waterloo have joined forces to take on a pressing environmental problem by using synthetic biology to turn plastic waste into valuable resources. The multidisciplinary group is working together to review and identify strategies that leverage synthetic biology, microbial engineering and engineering design to degrade and upcycle plastic waste. "We're stepping out of our silos to advance sustainability," says Dr. Marc Aucoin, a professor in...

What sounds like the storyline of a medieval palace drama often plays out in real-life honey bee colonies. A once-strong ruler weakens, her supporters turn against her, and a dramatic change in leadership follows. For bees, these events are not rare. These internal takeovers carry both risks and benefits for colonies and for the agricultural systems that rely on them. This replacement process, known as supersedure, begins when thousands of worker bees sense that their queen is no longer...