Halifax researcher Glen Hougan is working on an "empathy suit" to give people a sense of what it feels like to grow old.
The suit has two internal harnesses that stoop the back and restrict movement around the joints, including the knees, shoulders and hips. A strap-on belly mimics the changing distribution of weight that can occur as people age. Thick gloves, goggles that simulate a number of visual problems and ear muffs that reduce hearing complete the geriatric makeover.
"When you walk in it, the stride is slower, you are kind of pulled over," says Mr. Hougan, an assistant professor who teaches product design at NSCAD University, the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design.
The suit is adjustable, and can simulate a range of ages.
It is still a work in progress but Mr. Hougan says the suit could eventually be used to train health-care professionals or staff in businesses that deal with the elderly.
LEAPING LIZARD TAILS
When geckos are being pursued by a predator they often leave their tails behind.
The dropped appendage then performs a solo act - flipping, jumping, swinging and lunging on its own for up to half an hour, says Tim Higham, a Canadian biologist at Clemson University in South Carolina.
The tail's acrobatics distract the predator and allows the gecko to escape, Dr. Higham says. He and his colleague, Anthony Russell at the University of Calgary, want to know more about how the lizard tails leap.
The tails aren't responding to signals from the animal's brain, Dr. Higham says. Rather, the movements are controlled by networks of neurons that operate independently in the spine. Geckos offer a good model for finding out how these networks work and one day, the research might help people with spinal cord injuries regain movement.
PARENTING BY LYING
One mother warned her son that if he didn't finish his meal he would get pimples all over his face. Another told her child that a rainbow in the sky had appeared just for her.
A new study has found that many parents lie to influence their children's behaviour or how they feel. Almost 80 per cent of the 127 parents in the United States who were surveyed said they had lied to their children.
"It is a widespread phenomenon, which was surprising to us," says University of Toronto psychology professor Kang Lee, one of the authors of the paper published in the Journal of Moral Education.
He says he and his colleagues need to do a follow-up study to find out how frequently parents lie to their children, and to determine the effects of "parenting by lying."
PLIGHT OF THE POLAR BEAR
Scientists aren't sure when the polar bear diverged from its closest cousin, the brown bear. But Dick Harington, a paleontologist at the Canadian Museum of Nature, says an ancient polar bear jaw bone found in Norway 19 months ago suggests they were already a distinct species 110,000 to 130,000 years ago.
This means polar bears would have survived during a period when temperatures were much warmer than today, says Dr. Harington, who recently published a paper on the evolution of northern marine mammals in the journal Ecological Applications.
But he notes that modern polar bears have to cope with hunters and pollution as well as rising temperatures and melting ice.
CORRECTION Mel Goodale and Christopher Striemer did research involving a man with impaired vision at the University of Western Ontario. Incorrect information appeared in my previous column.
Anne McIlroy is The Globe and Mail's science reporter.