Just in time for Valentine’s Day 2020, there’s this February 12, 2020 University of British Columbia (UBC) Faculty of Medicine Brain Talks event (from the Brain Talks event page), When: Wednesday February 12, 2019 at 6:00pmWhere: VGH [Vancouver General Hospital] Paetzhold TheatreClick here to get your tickets!Speakers:Dr. Rebecca Cobb: Sexual CommunicationDr. Spencer Wade and Veronica Li, RCC: Is Love an Emotion?Dr. Rebecca Cobb is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Simon Fraser University. Dr. Cobb…

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h/t to Miriam Halpenny’s October 14, 2019 Castanet article as seen on the Vancouverisawesome website for this news about bulletproof clothing being developed for Canada’s National Department of Defence. I found a September 4, 2019 University of British Columbia Okanagan news release describing the research and the funds awarded to it, The age-old technique of dressing in layers is a tried and tested way to protect from the elements. Now thanks to $1.5 million in…

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I just received (via email on February 7, 2020) the call for the 2020 (or 12th annual) Canadian Science Policy Conference (CSPC) panel submissions. After many years in Ottawa, the conference is moving a few feet over the provincial border between Ontario and Quebec into the city of Gatineau. For anyone not familiar with the Ottawa region, Gatineau is next door (from the Gatineau Wikipedia entry), Note: Links have been removed, Gatineau (/ˈɡætɪnoÊŠ/; French: [É¡atino]) is…

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I received this notice from ArtSci Salon mailing (on February 7, 2020 via email), Geometry is Life Robin Kingsburgh February 5 — 16, 2020Opening Reception: Saturday, February 8, 2 — 5 pm​ Cicada (detail), Robin Kingsburgh (Acrylic on MDF board, 36″ x 38″, 2018) My work takes inspiration from geometry. For me the square and the circle are starting points. And ending points. The square, defined by the horizontal and the vertical: it’s all you need.…

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An October 16, 2019 news item on Nanowerk announces some of the latest work with colloidal quantum dots, Researchers of the Optoelectronics and Measurement Techniques Unit (OPEM) at the University of Oulu [Finland] have invented a new method of producing ultra-sensitive hyper-spectral photodetectors. At the heart of the discovery are colloidal quantum dots, developed together with the researchers at the University of Toronto, Canada.Quantum dots are tiny particles of 15-150 atoms of semiconducting material that…

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There’s been a lot of talk about wearable electronics, specifically e-textiles, but nothing seems to have entered the marketplace. Scaling up your lab discoveries for industrial production can be quite problematic. From an October 10, 2019 news item on ScienceDaily, Producing functional fabrics that perform all the functions we want, while retaining the characteristics of fabric we’re accustomed to is no easy task.Two groups of researchers at Drexel University — one, who is leading the…

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Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) does not and never has made much sense to me. I understand each word individually it’s just that I’ve never thought they made much sense strung together that way. It’s taken years but I’ve finally found out what the words (when strung together that way) mean and the origins for the phrase. Hint: it’s all about the phages. Apparently, it all started with yogurt as Cynthia Graber and…

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A February 4, 2020 news item on Nanowerk announces research that makes it possible for kidneys to remove nanoparticles after they’ve been used in therapeutic remedies (Note: A link has been removed), In the past decade nanomedicine has contributed to better detection and treatment of cancer. Nanoparticles are several 100 times smaller than the smallest grain of sand and can therefore easily travel in the blood stream to reach the tumor.However, they are still too…

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Understanding the concept of zero—I still remember climbing that mountain, so to speak. It took the teacher quite a while to convince me that representing ‘nothing’ as a zero was worthwhile. In fact, it took the combined efforts of both my parents and the teacher to convince me to use zeroes as I was prepared to go without. The battle is long since over and I have learned to embrace zero. I don’t think bees…

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I’ve never seen an educational institution use a somewhat vulgar slang term such as ‘puke’ before. Especially not in a news release. You’ll find that elsewhere online ‘puke’ has been replaced, in the headline, with the more socially acceptable ‘vomit’. Since I wanted to catch this historic moment amid concerns that the original version of the news release will disappear, I’m including the entire news release as i saw it on EurekAlert.com (from an October…

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