Episode Description: Watching a tense soccer match nearly doubles cardiac event risk, and cortisol could start rising fourteen hours before kickoff. With Spain just taking the World Cup, a fair portion of the world’s population has basically been running a biological experiment on itself. Arielle and Karissa also get into the neurological reason summer keeps…
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Do eight weeks of salsa classes sound like an intervention to you? Show up, learn the footwork, rotate partners, move to music with a room full of people you probably don’t know. And at the end of those eight weeks, if you danced as part of this recent study,…
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Great news! The (adorable) numbat is no longer endangered. The IUCN has moved Western Australia’s animal emblem from Endangered to Near Threatened on its Red List, after more than 40 years of conservation work. “The downlisting of the numbat from Endangered to Near Threatened is what we have been…
The Government of Canada is asking Canadians to weigh in on how it can improve transparency around AI with a public consultation survey. The news: The survey, which is available online, was announced on Thursday by AI Minister Evan Solomon. Open until Sept. 23, it’s seeking input on how the federal government can strengthen transparency…
The Montréal and Kitchener-Waterloo deep learning research lab Maluuba was a frontrunner in Canada’s AI research ecosystem when it was acquired by Microsoft in 2017, years before the AI gold rush. In 2026, many of the deep learning problems the team worked on now underpin the large language models (LLMs) that fuel the inescapable AI…
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Large fashion companies in the EU can no longer destroy unsold clothing, shoes, or accessories. As of this week, that’s illegal. The change is part of the EU’s Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, which applies to companies with more than 250 employees and over roughly $55 million (50 million…
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Most people treat sleep debt as a tiredness problem. Get some extra rest on the weekend, recover, move on. The reality is messier. Missing sleep for several nights triggers a cascade of metabolic and cardiovascular changes that don’t reverse cleanly when you finally catch up. Research is pointing to…
NBA champion “Spicy P” was back in Toronto this week to name the prizewinners of his edtech accelerator program. The news: The Siakam EdTech Engine—an edtech accelerator run by former Toronto Raptor Pascal Siakam’s foundation and Toronto Metropolitan University’s DMZ—hosted its demo day on Tuesday, awarding $50,000 in total grants to three startups that pitched…
SUB: Canadian product was built on case law dataset from Clio’s Jurisage acquisition. Canadian legaltech giant Clio has launched an AI work assistant in Canada after it saw success among its US customers, the company said. The news: Burnaby, BC-based Clio announced on Thursday that it is launching Clio Work, its AI-powered workspace for lawyers…
While pop culture and science fiction have cemented the idea of humanoid robots in our collective imagination, the reality is most robots look nothing like us. The physical AI revolution is underway, and Canadian research has paved the path. Take the Hopcopter, which uses a combination of jumping and flying to move around more efficiently…
