Sturgeon science and stewardship - UMToday

As a field engineer at the Vancouver Airport Authority, Jessica Chan supports the airport terminal projects team on construction and maintenance projects. Prior to this role, Jessica was an environmental technician at the airport, receiving the national Canadian Airports Council’s Rising Star Award in 2026 for her contributions to responsible stewardship and land and water use practices in the aviation sector. Tell us about your first job at the Vancouver Airport Authority.  I joined the Vancouver Airport Authority’s Climate and Environment team in early 2022, working in a range of areas, including the water quality management program, spill response, hazardous waste management and environmental compliance. A major area of focus involved monitoring water quality during winter operations when aircraft are de-iced, and finding ways to prevent and mitigate glycol loss to the environment.  My work also included sampling and tracking emerging contaminants such as 6PPD‑quinone and PFAS and supporting incident command during spill response events.

With 302 neurons, 200 of them in their heads, hermaphrodite female roundworms reveal surprising sex-specific differences in the nervous system and how these differences influence behavior, reproduction, and aging. Researchers at Northeastern University compared brain activity in male and hermaphroditic Caenorhabditis elegans, a microscopic worm widely used in biological research to understand how sex wires males and female nervous systems differently.