There are two items today, an event in Vancouver (Canada) and an online competition.

Pediatric biobanking

From a September 14, 2018 Café Scientifique Vancouver announcement received via email,

Our next café will happen on TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25TH at 7:30PM in the
back room at YAGGER'S DOWNTOWN (433 W Pender). Our speaker for the
evening will be DR. SUZANNE VERCAUTEREN the Director of BC Children’s
Hospital BioBank. Her topic will be:

GIVING PATIENTS, THE PUBLIC, AND HEALTH-CARE PROVIDERS A VOICE IN
PEDIATRIC BIOBANKING

Dr. Vercauteren is a hematopathologist and associate head of the
department of pathology and laboratory medicine at BC Children’s
Hospital. She obtained her MD and PhD at the University of Utrecht, The
Netherlands and did her residency in hematological pathology at the
University of British Columbia. Since 2013 Suzanne has been the
director of the BC Children’s Hospital BioBank, the first
institutional pediatric biobank in Canada to allow for a standardized
approach of patients and sample collections and ensuring high quality
samples and data and reduce consent burden for patients. “My research
includes ethical issues as well as public engagement and education in
biobanking. I believe that a systematic approach for the collection of
patient specimens and data is allowing groundbreaking research that can
quickly be translated into improved diagnosis and clinical care in many
areas of research.” She has published several papers regarding
pediatric biobanking and consenting [consent] and is a member of the Canadian
Tissue Repository Network Management Committee. She received several
grants to study public perception on (pediatric) biobanking topics.

You can find Dr. Vercauteren’s webpage on the BC Children’s Hospital website here.

One thing I’m curious about is this quote from her event description: “I believe that a systematic approach for the collection of patient specimens and data is allowing groundbreaking research that can quickly be translated into improved diagnosis and clinical care in many areas of research.” Since she started her biobanking initiative in 2011, have there been any breakthroughs? It seems to me that seven years later there might be some promising news and it’s surprisingly unmentioned in the event description.

Science Borealis’ Online Science Communication Competition

I stumbled across this recently, from the Science Borealis 2018 People’s Choice Award webpage,

VOTE! 2018 People’s Choice Awards: Canada’s Favourite Science Online!

Science Borealis and our co-sponsor the Science Writers and Communicators of Canada (SWCC) are excited to present the nominees for the 2018 People’s Choice Awards: Canada’s Favourite Science Online!

This year you are invited to vote for your 3 favourites in 2 categories — Favourite Science Blog and Favourite Science Site. The winners of each category will get snazzy site badges, endless bragging rights, and will be featured in full write-ups on both our blog and SWCC’s site.

Once you’ve voted, join us on social media to cheer for your favourite blogs and sites using the hashtag #CdnSciFav.

Take a look at the contenders before you GO HERE TO VOTE!

Here are the 2018 contenders for the Favourite Science Blog category:

Palaeocast – Dave Marshall, Joe Keating, Laura Soul, Liz Martin-Silverstone, Caitlin Colleary, Tom Merrick-Fletcher

Twitter: @Palaeocast

The Palaeocast blog is where we let palaeontologists around the world tell their own stories in their own voice. Palaeocast is a free web series exploring the fossil record and the evolution of life on earth.

Scientist Sees Squirrel – Stephen B. Heard

Twitter: @StephenBHeard

I’m an evolutionary ecologist and entomologist at the University of New Brunswick. Most of my current research has to do with plant-insect interactions and with the evolution of new biodiversity.  But when I’m not doing research, I think about a lot of quasirandom things.  I blog about some of them here.

Birds In Mud – Lisa Buckley

Twitter: @LisaVipes

I am a vertebrate paleontologist who specializes in the study of the tracks and traces of Mesozoic animals, specifically Cretaceous-age (145 million years ago to 66 million years ago) dinosaurs and birds!

Agile Scientific – Matt Hall, Evan Bianco, Diego Castañeda, Robert Leckenby, Kara Turner, Tracey Lothian

Twitter: @agilegeo

A bioscience and technology blog with a string focus on geophysics and geosciences, Agile also organizes hackathons, teaches coding for geoscientists and engineers, and promotes open discussion about pressing topics in science and industry.

Canadian Mountain Network – Various authors

Twitter: @CanMountainNet

CMN was established to collaboratively address the diverse challenges facing mountain regions by harnessing existing capacities and seeking new research relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers and communities. Our aim is for CMN to become a national and global leader in inclusive, co-designed, interdisciplinary mountain-research that recognizes the interconnectedness in mountain systems between the environment, economy, and society, and encourages an integrated approach for long-term sustainability that serves the needs of mountain communities. CMN and its administrative centre is hosted at the University of Alberta.

Obesity Panacea – Peter Janiszewski and Travis Saunders

Twitter: @TravisSaunders and @Dr_Janis

Obesity Panacea educates people about the science (or lack thereof) behind popular weight loss products, and has grown to include discussions of the latest news and research regarding obesity, nutrition and physical activity.

The Boreal Beetle – Dezene Huber

Twitter: @docdez

Insect Ecology Lab at the University of Northern British Columbia blogging about ecology, entomology, and life.

 

Spiderbytes – Catherine Scott

Twitter: @Cataranea

This is a blog about spiders (and probably occasionally some other stuff, too)! The idea is that each post will feature accumulations of cool bits of information (‘bytes’) about spiders: spiderbytes. By the way, spiders (usually) do NOT bite, and one of my dreams (for this blog, and in life) is to shift perceptions about spiders from fearsome, aggressive, disgusting etc., to amazing, beautiful, sophisticated, charming, fascinating, elegant, resourceful, mysterious, and many more adjectives that could be used to describe these awesome arthropods!

Jasmine Janes – Jasmine Janes

Twitter: @JazJanes

I am an Assistant Professor in Plant Ecology/Genetics at Vancouver Island University. I teach units including Plant Ecology, Conservation Biology, Terrestrial Ecosystems and Computing for Biologists. I currently work and collaborate on projects ranging from genomics of eucalypts and mountain pine beetle, to speciation mechanisms in Stellaria, to dietary metagenomics in Vancouver Island Marmot.

Here are the 2018 contenders for the Favourite Science Site category:

Earth Rangers Kids outreach

Hey Science – Science Sam  Popular science

Inside the Perimeter Theoretical physics

Quebec Science  French language magazine

Research2Reality Joint university research

Science Alive General science

Science for the People   Podcast and radio show

The Marine Detective  Marine bio/art

The Weather Network – Out of This World Weather, climate and space science

Tomatosphere – Let’s Talk Science  Education

At a guess, every single blogger is a member of SWCC and, oddly, all of them are scientists. It will be a great day, as far as I’m concerned, when regular people, assuming there are some out there, writing about science are in contention for these awards..