Looks good on paper

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today. All about North Macedonia, one of the last under-explored destinations; what happens when you and your fur baby share a bed; and a monarch butterfly’s daring trip from Winnipeg to Mexico

Let’s get into it!

North Macedonia was just Macedonia until it freed itself from Yugoslavia in 1991, and in the 35 years since, it’s gone largely unnoticed by wanderlusters looking for a European getaway.

The country is landlocked, though as you can see above, that doesn’t mean there aren’t two beautiful spring-fed lakes it shares with Albania and Greece.

Situated just north of Greece, North Macedonia is known more for its mountainous terrain, and of course its history dating back through the Byzantine, Ottoman, and Yugoslav eras.

“When I enter my car, whichever direction I want to drive, I have a mountain in front of me and a mountain behind me,” Frosina Pandurska-Dramikjanin, who lives in the nation’s capital, Skopje, told CNN Travel. “I think this is the best way to describe my country.”

Along with the mountains, there are some almost-unbelievably well-preserved Byzantine monasteries, some of which are over 1,000 years old, dotting the shorelines of the calm and serene lakes mentioned above.

That includes Sveti Naum, which sits on Lake Ohrid, itself a UNESCO heritage site. The Sveti Naum monastery has stood for 1,021 years, and is a crown jewel (along with the lake) of North Macedonian history, architecture, and all-out beauty.

Researchers at Toronto’s University Health Network are using AI to help render three-dimensional images for cancer patients.

The technology will ostensibly put a digitized clone of a patient on a screen for them to look at while physicians communicate their prognosis, allowing for visualizations that can better inform the patient and the medical team.

“Instead of being 2D, just a flat image on a screen, it becomes this interactive model that is not just a recreation of what could be, but it’s an image of you,” Wagner Souza, a staff scientist at UHN and assistant professor at the University of Toronto, told Global News.

Sousa also noted how important it is to many to actually be able to see what it is that’s being discussed, given that it’s their own body and given the seriousness that comes with most cancer diagnoses.

“People say that an image is worth 1,000 words. Maybe a live image that is not just a model, but it’s you…maybe that will be worth way more than 1,000 words and give you the power that you need to make a decision that you are satisfied with.”

The conventional wisdom is to let sleeping dogs lie, and while some may take that advice to include lying next to them, a study published in PLOS One last week by researchers at the University of Toronto suggests that may actually be disruptive.

The researchers recruited 20 individuals from southern Ontario, along with their 38 dogs, and tracked both the canines’ and humans’ sleeping patterns for about a month using Fitbit-like technology.

While previous research suggested letting dogs sleep in the same bed may be disruptive to their humans’ sleep quality, the UofT researchers found the opposite. While both the dogs (all huskies or malamutes) and humans displayed similar wakeful activity at similar times, it was the humans whose bodies moved first, thereby disturbing their furry friends’ slumber.

Previous research found that sleeping with a dog nearby may actually be beneficial to both the dog’s and the human’s sleep quality, because dogs are “zeitgebers”; they demonstrate consistent rhythms in their behaviour, like when to sleep, eat, and play.

These canine characteristics tend to cause humans to adapt to the dog’s rhythms, rather than the other way around, creating a better-organized routine, and one that improves sleep consistency and quality. 👀

A team of researchers at Winnipeg’s Assiniboine Park Zoo, tagged 1,300 monarch butterflies with small tracking devices to keep tabs on their incredible journey from the Great White North to southern Mexico.

These beautiful creatures make the trek there and back every year in order to keep clear of the harsh conditions that often befall central Canada during the winter months.

One butterfly has already made it south of the U.S.-Mexico border, covering over 2,000 kilometres in just 40 days, according to the team that tracked data sent from the device the butterfly is wearing.

“There’s two tiny solar panels and each little tag weighs 0.06 grams,” said Laura Burns, conservation programs manager at the Assiniboine Park Zoo. “They are solar powered, so they’ll continue running as long as they have access to sunlight and they ping off of cell towers, cell phones and wildlife telemetry towers to track migration.”

The butterflies don’t take a direct path, and some clearly take more scenic routes, because the tracking devices revealed these fierce little guys are frankly all over the place.

“Some of them are still on the move. There are a bunch in Kansas and Missouri and Oklahoma and Texas right now,” Burns said. “A few of them will be making it to Mexico the next few days I’m hoping, if the winds are in their favour.”

Well hello there, Staker Paul! Looks like you’ve taken yourself off to Italy and are enjoying its sights, sounds, and delights!

Wondering what’s been his favourite place on this sojourn? Andiamo!

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