UBC This Week 02-May-2013

A research project based at UBC and Université Laval is allowing people to find out how individuals voting under different systems can make a difference to the result of B.C.’s election on May 14th.

B.C. voters are being encouraged to participate in the study by voting online (www.votesbc.org) using three different voting systems; First Past The Post (FPTP), Proportional Representation (PR) and Single Transferable Vote (STV). Voting is done anonymously and reflects the current B.C. election, with all candidates in each riding on the ballot.

“Our goal is to get as many B.C. voters to cast their vote in the way many others already do around the world. We’ve chosen systems currently used in the Netherlands, Ireland and Australia as examples so we can assess the results of these different methods of voting,” says Allan Craigie, researcher at UBC and member of the VotesBC.org team.

“B.C. failed to adopt the Single Transferable Vote on two different occasions,” says Craigie. “We never actually got the chance to try it out – so wouldn’t it be interesting to see what effect it would have in 2013, even if there are no electoral consequences? It will give voters an understanding of how all these systems would work.”

The site is live from May 1st until voting day. The results will be released in the days following the May 14 Provincial election on the VotesBC.org website.

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UBC researchers have found that girls who received two doses of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine had immune responses to HPV-16 and HPV-18 infection that were not worse than the responses for young women who received three doses.

HPV infections cause nearly all cases of cervical cancer, which is the second most commonly diagnosed cancer in women worldwide. The study, published in the May 1 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), lends more plausibility to adopting reduced-dose schedules for the vaccine, which would lower barriers to global implementation.

Lead co-investigator Simon Dobson, UBC Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Clinical investigator at the Child & Family Research Institute, noted that more data on the duration of protection are needed before reduced-dose schedules can be recommended. For more information, click here.

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UBC’s recently launched First Year Seminar in Science, a small class experience focused on critical thinking and communication skills, has been awarded the 2013 Alan Blizzard Award by Canada’s Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.

The award recognizes advances made in student engagement and learning outcomes driven by teamwork and co-operation between instructors, faculty members and administrators across departments.

Seminar in Science (SCIE113) was launched in 2010, and has since doubled in size. With only 27 students per class, SCIE113 engages students in ongoing conversations with their instructor, teaching assistants, peers and research scientists and focuses on active learning about the elements of a scientific approach, and how to communicate science. Four UBC faculties are now involved in the teaching or development of SCIE113.

For more information, click here.

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Faculty of Education professor Jo-Ann Archibald was among the winners of the American Educational Research Association’s 2013 awards of excellence in education research. Archibald was named recipient of the Scholar of Color Distinguished Career Contribution Award. The award recognizes researchers who have made contributions to the understanding of issues that disproportionately affect minority populations, and minority scholars who have made a significant contribution to education research and development. For more information, click here.

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Nursing faculty members Cathryn Jackson and Maura MacPhee were recognized by the College of Registered Nurses of British Columbia (CRNBC) for their contributions to the profession and for demonstrating excellence in relation to the CRNBC Professional Standards for Registered Nurses and Nurse Practitioners. For more information, click here.

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Megan Levings, Associate Professor in the Department of Surgery, is co-leading a clinical trial that aims to improve long-term survival and quality of life for transplant patients. Working with Denis-Claude Roy of the University of Montreal, they will take a technology developed to improve stem cell transplantation and apply it to kidney transplants, with the goal of reducing the need for immune-suppressant drugs.

The trials are part of the new Canadian National Transplant Research Program, which is also supporting another B.C.-led project, directed by Kirk Schultz, professor in the Division of Hematology and Oncology in the Department of Pediatrics. Schultz’s team will create a national platform to support clinical trials, a national transplant registry effort and a national effort to link biological samples with patient outcomes. For more information, click here.

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Five projects by members of the UBC Faculty of Medicine have received funding from a national competition for bioinformatics-related research.

Genome Canada, in partnership with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, distributed $6.2 million through the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Competition. The projects will be conducted over three years. Expected outcomes include improved analytical approaches to detecting variations and mutations in DNA and RNA that are related to cancer diagnosis and care, as well as easy-to-use bioinformatics and genomic tools to enable health care workers to better manage communicable diseases. For more information, click here.

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Standing Up with Ga’axsta’las: Jane Constance Cook and the Politics of Memory, Church, and Custom by Leslie A. Robertson, Assistant Professor, UBC Department of Anthropology, and the Kwagu’l Gixsam Clan, published by UBC Press, is a finalist for the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize, one of the BC Book Prizes awarded by the West Coast Book Prize Society.

Standing Up with Ga’axsta’las tells the story of Jane Constance Cook (1870-1951), a controversial Kwakwaka’wakw leader and activist who lived during a period of enormous colonial upheaval. The winner of the Haig-Brown Prize will be announced May 4. For more information about the book, click here.

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UBC engineering students Hilary Wong, Heidi Manicke and Andrea Palmer will receive scholarships awarded by the Canadian Engineering Memorial Foundation (CEMF). They were selected as 2013 recipients based upon their volunteerism, leadership in their communities and serving as ambassadors for the engineering profession.

Wong and Manicke will receive the only Vale Inco $10,000 CEMF undergraduate scholarships awarded in Canada. Palmer has been named one of the nation’s top-five undergraduate engineering students and will receive the $5,000 B.C. regional scholarship. For more information, click here.

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Many UBC Faculty of Medicine members occupied leadership positions at this year’s Canadian Conference on Medical Education (CCME) held in April in Quebec City. In the scholarship sphere, 160 were authors on 58 peer-reviewed presentations, including 28 podium presentations, 23 poster presentations, six workshops and one colloquium.

Glenn Regehr, Associate Director for Research in the Centre for Health Education Scholarship, was the recipient of the 2013 Canadian Association for Medical Education Ian Hart Award for Distinguished Contribution to Medical Education.

For the fourth year in a row, Carol Ann Courneya, Associate Professor in the Department of Cellular and Physiological Sciences, co-organized “White Coat, Warm HeART,” showcasing art created by health sciences students, residents and faculty from across Canada. For more information, click here.

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The Faculty of Applied Science congratulates the Class of 2013 graduates. Over the next few weeks, a few of their rising stars will be featured on this wall of fame.

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