UBC This Week

Christian Schoof, assistant professor with the Dept. of Earth and Ocean Sciences, has been awarded a 2011 James B Macelwane Medal. The medal is awarded annually “for significant contributions to the geophysical sciences by an outstanding young scientist” by the American Geophysical Union. The award will be presented during the Union’s December meeting in San Francisco.

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Dr. Rizhi Wang has been elected as the president for the Canadian Biomaterials Society (CBS) for 2012-2013. Wang is an associate professor in the Dept. of Materials Engineering at UBC and a Canada Research Chair in Biomaterials. His research interests are biomaterials, orthopaedic implants, and bone and hip fracture.

For more information, visit www.mtrl.ubc.ca.

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April Dutheil, UBC research assistant, has been invited by the Universitas 21, the leading network of research universities in the world, to present her research on the Nanisiniq: Arviat History Project in Shanghai. From July 13-18, Dutheil will partake in the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference at Fudan University.

The Nanisiniq: Arviat History Project is a collaborative initiative between the Sivulinuut Elders Society and UBC, which has trained four Inuit youth, Curtis Konek, Amy Owingayak, Jordan Konek, and Patrick Pingushat, as researchers in discovering and re-telling the history of the Arctic from an Inuit perspective. In accordance with the name of the project, Nanisiniq, meaning ‘journey of discovery’ in English, the team of young Inuit working with Dutheil are documenting their own journey of discovery using filmmaking.

Over the past year, the team has completed the bulk of their fieldwork, including interviewing Inuit elders, Qablunaat informants, and traveling to Yellowknife, Vancouver, and Ottawa to conduct research on Inuit history. They are now starting to edit their footage to produce a full- length documentary film aimed at inspiring other young Inuit to take pride in learning more about Inuit history and culture.

Learn more about the project, which is coordinated by Profs. Frank Tester and Paule McNicoll from the School of Social Work at UBC, here: http://nanisiniq.tumblr.com/.

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UBC Pacific Parkinson’s Research Centre affiliates Dr. Martin McKeown and Dr. Silke Cresswell have received funding for a two-year clinical research grant from the National Parkinson Foundation (NPF).

Their study, “MRI biomarkers for motor and non-motor manifestations of Parkinson’s disease” was chosen for its immediate impact on one of three priority research areas designated by the NPF.

McKeown and Cresswell’s study will examine Parkinson’s disease patients to measure the shapes of deep structures in the brain with the goal of developing a biomarker for Parkinson’s. The physicians hope to develop a reliable method to assess overall disease severity in Parkinson’s with the intent that the technique can be replicated at hospitals anywhere.  

For more information, visit http://www.parkinson.org/getdoc/95e92db6-02c9-4ea0-8c46-fcbf1e86af89/default.

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Prof. Jim Lim of the UBC Dept. of Chemical and Biological Engineering is the winner of the 2011 Bantrel Award in Design and Industrial Practice from the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering (CSChE) for his contributions to the practice of chemical engineering in industry and to the teaching of process design to students in chemical engineering.

This award is presented to a Canadian citizen or a resident of Canada for innovative design or production activities accomplished in Canada.

For more information, visit www.chbe.ubc.ca.

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The loss of large predator animals across the globe is having unanticipated impacts on processes as diverse as human disease dynamics, wildfires and biogeochemical cycles, according to new research by an international team of scientists that includes UBC zoologists.

The report, published today in the journal Science by two dozen researchers from institutions in the United States, Europe and Canada, calls for increased scientific scrutiny of the the ‘top-down’ ecological role played by large predator species.

For more information, visit http://science.ubc.ca/news/553.

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A music video by local band Brighter Lights, Thicker Glasses made the front page of the Smithsonian website. The video to their song Cambrian Explosion was recently filmed in the Beaty Biodiversity Museum atrium with the blue whale exhibit in the background.

The music trio is John Palmer Palmer on the guitar/vocals, Michael Dunn on the dobro and from UBC civil engineering, Adjunct Prof. Brian Samuels on the cello.

Watch the video and read more at http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2011/07/the-cambrian-explosion-in-song/

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Twice-weekly, Asia Pacific Memo (APM) publishes short essays or video interviews on current issues in Asia and across the Pacific.

• July 12: Never-married Women in Southeast Asia
• July 7: Author Chan Koonchung on His Role as an Activist Public Intellectual (Video Interview)

To read or view the memos, visit http://www.asiapacificmemo.ca/.

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