Q&As

Smoke closes in on the remote community of Barkerville, B.C. during wildfire season

Preparing for wildfires: UBC experts share their tips

Experts from the faculty of forestry suggest practical measures for individuals and communities to protect their homes and surroundings from the B.C. wildfire risk, while calling for broader-scale solutions for managing wildfires.

May 24, 2023

Caring for our forests this camping season

We spoke with forestry PhD candidate and BC Registered Professional Forester Ira Sutherland about respecting and caring for the forests around us as we go camping this spring and summer.

May 18, 2023

Baby’s first bites: How to introduce food allergens to infants

In this Q&A, land and food systems PhD candidate Brock Williams discussed how to safely introduce food to an infant for the first time.

May 17, 2023

Why humans respect hard work regardless of results

Have you ever had a co-worker make a big show of how hard they work—even though they don’t get great results? They do this because people attach moral value to hard work, something Dr. Azim Shariff calls “effort moralization.”

May 11, 2023

An adult female Yuma myotis bat captured in the Lower Mainland in 2023. Credit: Aaron Aguirre.

Bats in Vancouver: UBC researchers to study secret city nightlife

They live among us and eat pesky insects, but unless you’re armed with an ultrasonic microphone you may never notice our nocturnal neighbours: bats.

May 8, 2023

Prenatal education by text message is working, UBC research shows

In this Q&A, Dr. Patricia Janssen discussed the decline of traditional in-person prenatal classes and the rise of text-messaging prenatal education program.

May 3, 2023

Dr. Jiaying Zhao on stage in February at the TED@DestinationCanada Institute in New York City. Photo credit: Gilberto Tadday/TED

UBC scholar combats climate change with happiness

The prevailing narrative on the climate crisis—and how to address it—is at best bewildering and at worst downright depressing. We’re told we face a doom-and-gloom scenario, and the only way to solve it is to give up simple pleasures and conveniences.

Apr 21, 2023

Gay dads have an image problem

Erez Aloni, associate professor in the Peter A. Allard School of Law, analyzed data about gay fathers in the U.S. and found there may be a systemic disparity in wealth accumulation among this group, a situation he says likely exists for Canadian fathers as well.

Apr 5, 2023

Cherry picking the best spots to enjoy Vancouver’s blooms

We spoke with Douglas Justice (he/him), associate director of horticulture and collections at the UBC Botanical Garden, about how the recent cold snap may affect this year’s blossoms, his favourite locations to enjoy the blooms, and how these trees have become so iconic in Vancouver.

Mar 16, 2023

Is AI coming for white-collar jobs? A psychology professor finds out the hard way

A UBC psychology professor wondered whether AI was smart enough to handle some of his workload. He was astonished to discover it could.

Mar 8, 2023

Polar bears scavenging through garbage in Churchill, Manitoba. The rapid loss
of sea ice in northern latitudes has driven many polar bears onto land and into human
settlements to find food. Photo credit: Keith Levit/Shutterstock

UBC zoologist: We need to acknowledge climate change’s effects on wildlife—for our own good

As the United Nations marks World Wildlife Day on March 3, UBC zoology professor Dr. Kaitlyn Gaynor (she/her) discusses how climate change is affecting wildlife, and why that can spell bad news for humans and animals alike.

Mar 2, 2023

Credit: Beyond Access / Creative Commons

UBC scholar helping AI overcome its language barrier

People around the world have been impressed with ChatGPT, a new chatbot developed by OpenAI that uses natural language processing (NLP) to seemingly answer any question.

Feb 21, 2023

Music from Final Fantasy, which will be performed by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra at The Orpheum on April 14-15 as part of the Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy tour, is the subject of PhD research by UBC music scholar Marina Gallagher.
Photo credit: AWR Music Productions, LLC

UBC scholar’s Final Fantasy is a PhD in ludomusicology

At the turn of the century, Marina Gallagher was a young piano student who played a lot of video games between piano lessons. The Final Fantasy series was her favourite.

Jan 23, 2023

Looking for a faster way to learn a language? Try historical linguistics

A new study conducted by UBC English professor Dr. James Stratton finds that one of the best ways of fast-tracking your language acquisition may be to learn a bit of language history – at least when it comes to learning a historically related language.

Dec 20, 2022

Climate change contributing to real Christmas tree shortage

UBC Faculty of Forestry professor Richard Hamelin explains how climate change continues to plague the real Christmas tree market and what should be considered for improving the worldwide growing supply chain shortage.

Dec 9, 2022

The stories men tell themselves after getting dumped

When a partner breaks up with them, men often try to make sense of it by telling themselves stories about how it happened.

Nov 30, 2022

In her new book Eco-Types: Five Ways of Caring about the Environment, Dr. Emily Huddart Kennedy, an associate professor in UBC’s faculty of arts, proposes five new categories to describe how people interact with the environment.

Which of these five eco-types are you?

When it comes to environmental politics there’s a tendency to associate the Left as pro-environment and the Right as anti-environment, but a UBC sociologist says this polarization might actually slow down our collective progress on environmental issues.

Nov 30, 2022

Logs on the beach can provide a measure of privacy for solo parkgoers as well as groups. Photo: Paulo Ramos/UBC Faculty of Forestry

Greenspaces should support mental health among young adults

New UBC research shows greenspace planning often fails to include the needs of youth and young adults between the ages of 15 and 24.

Nov 17, 2022

UBC researcher to study young adults who live with their parents

Young adults in Canada are less likely to own a home and more likely to live with their parents than they were a decade ago, according to recently released census data.

Nov 15, 2022

Seafood farming’s growth rate has already peaked, and now it’s in decline

Dr. Rashid Sumaila and Dr. Muhammed Oyinlola discuss why we can’t rely on just farmed seafood for our fishy needs.

Nov 14, 2022