Get a glimpse of some of the ‘coolest’ labs at UBC where researchers are probing the mysterious properties of materials under ultra-cold conditions.
By Dr. Sarah Burke, Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute at UBC Science
Ever been so cold you felt like you could hardly move? It’s not just you. Atoms and molecules feel it too. Part of why we perform experiments inside our low-temperature cryostats is so the atoms and molecules don’t move around so much. At room temperature, single atoms and molecules sitting on a surface whiz around too fast to see. When they’re cold they stay put and we can study how their electrons are arranged, and how molecules react and interact with each other.
Modern medicine produces a massive amount of information about patients, but what good is the data without a way to understand it? A UBC computer scientist is finding ways to uncover secrets in the haystack of data.
By Dr. Raymond Ng, Director UBC Data Science Institute
If I told you to find a needle in a haystack, how would you do it? You might start by diving in and throwing hay around the room in hopes of getting lucky and finding the needle quickly. But you’d probably realize this approach was messy and start neatly sorting one piece of hay at a time. You’d develop some sort of system and, eventually, find the needle.
My job is to find needles in haystacks. Actually, looking for a needle in a haystack is a piece of cake compared to…
UBC Science wishes you and yours a healthy and peaceful holiday season. We’ve put together a Do a Science a Day 2020 Holiday Calendar, proven to keep you and yours busy discovering, creating and baking into the New Year.
All times are PST ⏰
16 December: 1 PM
Join Beaty Biodiversity Museum interpreters for a virtual tour (RSVP required).
17 December: 4 PM
How do reindeer fly? UBC researchers on the physics of Santa, live. 🎁
18 December: Breakfast
Bake cinnamonnites — inspired by UBC’s famous cinnamon bun recipe!
19 December: Anytime
Build a Rube Goldberg machine that serves cake in an extraordinarily way.
20…
By studying how infectious worms interact with our immune system, we may one day be able to treat diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, and even allergies.
By Lisa Osborne, Assistant Professor, UBC Department of Microbiology and Immunology
Tell us what you think! We are running a reader survey.
2020 is the year of a global pandemic and we’re all hyper-focused on hand-washing, mask-wearing, and social distancing. Creepy crawly critters may be the last things we want to think about. But when the critters in question can impact how your immune system responds to viruses and bacteria, it’s worth a look.
We want to know what you think of our online magazine, Focus. Answer a few questions and be entered to win a $100 gift card. Survey closes November 30.
“There’s something aesthetically beautiful about mosquitoes, in a sort of a horrible evolutionary way,” says UBC biologist Ben Matthews.
By Silvia Moreno-Garcia, UBC Science
Tell us what you think! We are running a reader survey.
The way Ben Matthews talks about mosquitoes, you’d think he’s describing a creature out of Alien or Predator. But he’s right to point out the health hazards they pose — mosquitoes are the deadliest animals on Earth. Aedes aegypti mosquitoes infect more than 400 million people each year with dangerous pathogens, transmitting diseases such as malaria, Zika, dengue and yellow fever.
Matthews’ lab at UBC — including a mosquito nursery — studies how the genome of mosquitoes control their ability to perform adaptive behaviors…
Universities across the world have shifted to online classes. But certain types of research and learning require labs. UBC professors explain how they are tackling lab work and lab courses.
Sara Harris, Professor of Teaching and Associate Dean Academic, Faculty of Science
Faculty, staff and students have all been working hard over the summer to prepare for fall courses online. All teaching across UBC Science that can be conducted remotely is being done remotely. Mostly, this means teaching online, but in a few cases, it means students will work with physical objects — like Arduino for physics work — in their homes.
A UBC statistical ecologist is trying to develop better methods to include Indigenous Knowledge in animal movement and habitat mathematical models.
By Rowenna Gryba, UBC Statistics and Geography
In Bayesian statistics, there’s a term called a prior. The prior can be “something known before” called prior knowledge. But it can also be an uninformed prior, vague knowledge without any details. Prior knowledge, when combined with data, can give us a better understanding of what our data is trying to tell us. As a statistical ecologist whose work is based solidly in the Bayesian camp of statistics, a prior can provide some really interesting opportunities for exploration.
UBC experts explain why online outreach for youth isn’t as simple as just digitizing curricula.
By Theresa Liao (Communications Coordinator, UBC Physics and Astronomy), Alex May, (Graduate Student, UBC Physics and Astronomy), and Stephen Ji (Indigenous Outreach Curriculum Coordinator, UBC Geering Up Engineering Outreach)
Physics and Astronomy Outreach
Connection between facilitators and participants is central to meaningful experiences, so we focus on activities where participants interact with physicists and astronomers online.
It’s two o’clock on a sunny summer afternoon. Groups of children are sprinkled across the grassy lawn, listening to a countdown so they can launch their bottle rockets. Nearby, a small crowd forms a line behind a solar telescope, listening attentively as an astronomer shares facts about the…
Overshadowed by their more famous cousin, the honey bee, bumble bees have been understudied. But UBC’s Jennifer Lipka wants to get a closer look at these fuzzy insects.
By Jennifer Lipka, UBC BeeHIVE Research Cluster
My bee search started last summer. With bug net in hand, I ran around the University of British Columbia’s Point Grey campus chasing bumble bees. As you can imagine, bumble bees are fast. We used nets and vials to catch bumble bees and chill them with ice to slow down their metabolism to photograph them — otherwise, the bees move too quickly to take a snapshot. I also pushed a portable weather station from site to site in a baby stroller. More on that later.
I became interested in bumble bees from years of observing them in my vegetable garden.
UBC Science
Stories from the Faculty of Science at the University of British Columbia | Edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, assistant editor Koby Michaels | science.ubc.ca
