Research & Ideas

Illustration of Hamlet

Something Rotten In the State of the Arts?

Purists claim the arts should not be sullied by business. Pragmatists devalue the BA for failing to impart job skills. A pox on them, for they are all wrong. A defence of the liberal arts degree

Illustration of a medieval monk talking in old english to a man with a spear and helmet

Lodes of Culture

U of T researchers are unearthing the A-Æ-B-Cs of cultural history from medieval times to the present

Freedom 60?

Seniors benefit from public programs when retiring between the ages 60 and 61

Resourceful Device

Risk and expense of extensive drilling not required with new energy sourcing device

Superconductor?

In addition to his administrative duties, the new president will continue his research on high-temperature superconductors. To do all that, he may have to be one himself

Light Heavyweights

A team of U of T scientists has won an international fight to control light and make it dance like electrons. A new era in telecommunications and computing is about to enter the ring

Guy Gavriel Kay

Of Murder and Magic

The inspiration for the fanciful novels of Guy Gavriel Kay and Caroline Roe sprang from the U of T campus

Portrait of Henry Wentworth Monk, 1858 by William Holman Hunt (1827-1910). Oil on canvas, 53.3 x 67.3 cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, purchased 1911 / Photo: National Gallery of Canada

Zeal

William Holman Hunt's portrait of Henry Wentworth Monk

Painful Truth

Study shows women with severe arthritis are half as likely to undergo surgery than men

The Thousand-Year Itch

How do you get 10 scholars to wax anything but bored about the millennium? Scratch the surface of the Y2K hype and ask them to predict the future of their fields

Led by Professor Donald Chant, left, environmental activists recognized Survival Day in 1970.

Green Power

A 1969 article in The Varsity ignited students to start the Canadian environmental movement

Salt-water solution

Isolation of a gene could improve farming productivity in areas of the world where crops are compromised by saline irrigation water