The cinema effect: Turning films into a gateway to science

Beaver Island is one in a string of verdant and scenic jewels in a northern Lake Michigan archipelago.

It's autumn in the Southern Hemisphere, which means it's fog season in the Victorian Alps. NASA's Terra satellite captured this view of morning fog filling valleys in several national parks across the mountains of eastern Victoria in May.

Archaeologists have found something unexpected inside a 1,600-year-old Roman-era Egyptian mummy: a fragment of Homer's Iliad. It wasn't placed beside the body, but inside the mummy's abdomen. But the real surprise isn't just where the fragment was found. It's how it got there. To understand, we must go back—to the Iliad itself, and to what it became in the Roman world.

Scientists at UBC Okanagan have uncovered how plants produce mitraphylline, a rare natural compound with promising anti cancer potential. The team identified two enzymes that work together to build the molecule’s unusual twisted structure, solving a mystery that had puzzled researchers for years. Because mitraphylline appears only in tiny amounts in tropical plants like kratom and cat’s claw, the discovery could make it far easier to produce sustainably in the future.