Tag Archives: TRIUMF

TRIUMF (Canada’s national particle accelerator centre) welcomes Nigel Smith as its new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) on May 17, 2021and some Hollywood news

I have two bits of news as noted in the headline. There’s news about TRIUMF located on the University of British Columbia (UBC) endowment lands and news about Dr. Suzanne Simard (UBC Forestry) and her memoir, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Fores.

Nigel Smith and TRIUMF (Canada’s national particle accelerator centre)

As soon as I saw his first name, Nigel, I bet myself he’d be from the UK (more about that later in this posting). This is TRIUMF’s third CEO since I started science blogging in May 2008. When I first started it was called TRIUMF (Canada’s National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics) but these days it’s TRIUMF (Canada’s national particle accelerator centre).

As for the organization’s latest CEO, here’s more from a TRIUMF February 12, 2021 announcement page ( the text is identical to TRIUMF’s February 12, 2021 press release),

Dr. Nigel Smith, Executive Director of SNOLAB, has been selected to serve as the next Director of TRIUMF.  

Succeeding Dr. Jonathan Bagger, who departed TRIUMF in January 2021 to become CEO of the American Physical Society, Dr. Smith’s appointment comes as the result of a highly competitive, six-month international search. Dr. Smith will begin his 5-year term as TRIUMF Director on May 17, 2021. 

“I am truly honoured to have been selected as the next Director of TRIUMF”, said Dr. Smith. “I have long been engaged with TRIUMF’s vibrant community and have been really impressed with the excellence of its science, capabilities and people. TRIUMF plays a unique and vital role in Canada’s research ecosystem and I look forward to help continue the legacy of excellence upheld by Dr. Jonathan Bagger and the previous TRIUMF Directors”.  

Describing what interested him in the position, Smith spoke to the breadth and impact of TRIUMF’s diverse science programs, stating “TRIUMF has an amazing portfolio of research covering fundamental and applied science that also delivers tangible societal impact through its range of medical and commercialisation initiatives. I am extremely excited to have the opportunity to lead a laboratory with such a broad and world-leading science program.” 

“Nigel brings all the necessary skills and background to the role of Director,” said Dr. Digvir Jayas, Interim Director of TRIUMF, Chair of the TRIUMF Board of Management, and Vice-President, Research and International at the University of Manitoba. “As Executive Director of SNOLAB, Dr. Smith is both a renowned researcher and experienced laboratory leader who offers a tremendous track record of success spanning the local, national, and international spheres. The Board of Management is thrilled to bring Nigel’s expertise to TRIUMF so he may help guide the laboratory through many of the exciting developments on the horizon.  

Dr. Smith joins TRIUMF at an important period in the laboratory’s history, moving into the second year of our current Five-Year Plan (2020-2025) and preparing to usher in a new era of science and innovation that will include the completion of the Advance Rare Isotope Laboratory (ARIEL) and the Institute for Advanced Medical Isotopes (IAMI) [not to be confused with Amii {Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute}]. This new infrastructure, alongside TRIUMF’s existing facilities and world-class research programs, will solidify Canada’s position as a global leader in both fundamental and applied research. 

Dr. Smith expressed his optimism for TRIUMF, saying “I am delighted to have this opportunity, and it will be a pleasure to lead the laboratory through this next exciting phase of our growth and evolution.” 

Smith is leaving what is probably one of the more unusual laboratories, at a depth of 2km, SNOLAB is the deepest, cleanest laboratory in the world. (more information either at SNOLAB or its Wikipedia entry.)

Is Smith from the UK? Some clues

I found my subsequent clues on SNOLAB’s ‘bio’ page for Dr. Nigel Smith,

Nigel Smith joined SNOLAB as Director during July 2009. He currently holds a full Professorship at Laurentian University, adjunct Professor status at Queen’s University, and a visiting Professorial chair at Imperial College, London. He received his Bachelor of Science in physics from Leeds University in the U.K. in 1985 and his Ph. D. in astrophysics from Leeds in 1991. He has served as a lecturer at Leeds University, a research associate at Imperial College London, group leader (dark matter) and deputy division head at the STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, before relocating to Canada to oversee the SNOLAB deep underground facility.

The answer would seem to be yes, Nigel James Telfer Smith is originally from the UK.

I don’t know if this is going to be a trend but this is the second ‘Nigel” to lead TRIUMF. (The Nigels are now tied with the Johns and the Alans. Of course, the letter ‘j’ seems the most popular with four names, John, John, Jack, and Jonathan.) Here’s a list of TRIUMF’s previous CEOs (from the TRIUMF Wikipedia entry),

Since its inception, TRIUMF has had eight directors [now nine] overseeing its operations.

The first Nigel (Lockyer) is described as an American in his Wikipedia entry. He was born in Scotland and raised in Canada. However, he has spent the majority of his adult life in the US, other than the five or six years at TRIUMF. So, previous Nigel also started life in the UK.

Good luck to the new Nigel.

UBC forestry professor, Suzanne Simard’s memoir going to the movies?

Given that Simard’s memoir, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, was published last week on May 4, 2021, this is very heady news,. From a May 12, 2021 article by Cassandra Gill for the Daily Hive (Note: Links have been removed),

Jake Gyllenhaal is bringing the story of a UBC professor to the big screen.

The Oscar nominee’s production company, Nine Stories, is producing a film based on Suzanne Simard’s memoir, Finding the Mother Tree.

Amy Adams is set to play Simard, who is a forest ecology expert renowned for her research on plants and fungi.

Adams is also co-producing the film with Gyllenhaal through her own company, Bond Group Entertainment.

The BC native [Simard] developed an interest in trees and the outdoors through her close relationship with her grandfather, who was a horse logger.

Her 30 year career and early life is documented in the memoir, which was released last week on May 4 [2021]. Simard explores how trees have evolved, have memories, and are the foundation of our planet’s ecosystem — along with her own personal experiences with grief.

The scientists’ [sic] influence has had influence in popular culture, notably in James Cameron’s 2009 film Avatar. The giant willow-like “Tree of Souls” was specifically inspired by Simard’s work.

No mention of a script and no mention of financing, so, it could be a while before we see the movie on Netflix, Apple+, HBO, or maybe a movie house (if they’re open by then).

I think the script may prove to the more challenging aspect of this project. Here’s the description of Simard’s memoir (from the Finding the Mother Tree webpage on suzannesimard.com)

From the world’s leading forest ecologist who forever changed how people view trees and their connections to one another and to other living things in the forest–a moving, deeply personal journey of discovery.

About the Book

In her first book, Simard brings us into her world, the intimate world of the trees, in which she brilliantly illuminates the fascinating and vital truths – that trees are not simply the source of timber or pulp, but are a complex, interdependent circle of life; that forests are social, cooperative creatures connected through underground networks by which trees communicate their vitality and vulnerabilities with communal lives not that different from our own.

Simard writes – in inspiring, illuminating, and accessible ways – how trees, living side by side for hundreds of years, have evolved, how they perceive one another, learn and adapt their behaviors, recognize neighbors, and remember the past; how they have agency about the future; elicit warnings and mount defenses, compete and cooperate with one another with sophistication, characteristics ascribed to human intelligence, traits that are the essence of civil societies – and at the center of it all, the Mother Trees: the mysterious, powerful forces that connect and sustain the others that surround them.

How does Simard’s process of understanding trees and conceptualizing a ‘mother tree’ get put into a script for a movie that’s not a documentary or an animation?

Movies are moving pictures, yes? How do you introduce movement and action in a script heavily focused on trees, which operate on a timescale that’s vastly different.

It’s an interesting problem and I look forward to seeing how it’s resolved. I wish them good luck.

ARPICO November 13, 2018 event in Vancouver (Canada): The Mysterious Dark-Side of the Universe: From Quarks to the Big Bang with Dark Matter

The Society of Italian Researchers and Professionals in Western Canada (ARPICO) is hosting a physics event for those of us who don’t have Phd’s in physics. From an October 24, 2018 ARPICO announcement (received via email),

The second event of ARPICO’s fall 2018 activity will take place on Tuesday, November 13th, 2018 at the Roundhouse Community Centre (Room B). Our speaker will be Dr. Pietro Giampa, a physicist who recently joined the ranks of the TRIUMF laboratories [Canada’s particle accelerator centre and, formerly, Canada’s National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics] here in Vancouver. Dr. Giampa will give us an intriguing and, importantly, layperson-intelligible overview on the state of our knowledge of the universe especially in regards to so-called dark matter, a chapter of physics that the most complete theoretical model to-date cannot explain. We will learn, among other things, about an ambitious experiment (set up in a Canadian mine!) [emphasis mine] to detect neutrinos, fundamental and very elusive particles of our  cosmos. You can read a summary of Pietro Giampa’s lecture as well as his short professional biography below.

We look forward to seeing everyone there.

The evening agenda is as follows:

  • 6:30 pm – Doors Open for Registration
  • 7:00 pm – Start of the evening event with introductions & lecture by Dr. Pietro Giampa
  • ~8:15 pm – Q & A Period
  • to follow – Mingling & Refreshments until about 9:30 pm

If you have not already done so, please register for the event by visiting the EventBrite link or RSVPing to info@arpico.ca.

Further details are also available at arpico.ca and Eventbrite.

More details from the email announcement,

The Mysterious Dark-Side of the Universe: From Quarks to the Big Bang with Dark Matter

Understanding the true nature of our universe is one of the most fundamental quests of our society. The path of knowledge acquisition in that quest has led us to the hypothesis of “dark matter”, that is, a large proportion of the mass of the universe which appears invisible. In this lecture, with minimal technical language we will journey through the structure and evolution of the universe, from subatomic particles to the big bang, which gave rise to our universe, in an ultimate research to describe the dark side of the universe called dark matter. We will review what we have learnt thus far about dark matter, and get an in-depth look at how scientists are searching for something that can not be seen.

Dr. Pietro Giampa originally completed his undergraduate in physics at Royal Holloway University of London in the UK, where he wrote a thesis on SuperSymmetry Searches with the ATLAS Detector (so LHC related). Following his undergraduate, he completed a Master Degree in particle physics at the same institute where he developed a novel technique for directional detection of neutrons. It was after his master that he moved to Canada to complete his Ph.D at Queen’s University in Particle Astrophysics, working on the DEAP-3600 Experiment with Nobel laureate Prof. Arthur McDonald. In the summer of 2017 he moved to TRIUMF, where he is currently the Otto Hausser Fellow. At TRIUMF he continues his research for new forms of physics, by studying Dark Matter and Ultra-Cold Neutrons.

 


WHEN: Tuesday, November 13th, 2018 at 7:00pm (doors open at 6:30pm)

WHERE: Roundhouse Community Centre, Room B – 181 Roundhouse Mews, Vancouver, BC, V6Z 2W3

RSVP: Please RSVP at EventBrite (https://mysteryofdarkmatter.eventbrite.ca/) or email info@arpico.ca


Tickets are Needed

  • Tickets are FREE, but all individuals are requested to obtain “free-admission” tickets on EventBrite site due to limited seating at the venue. Organizers need accurate registration numbers to manage wait lists and prepare name tags.
  • All ARPICO events are 100% staffed by volunteer organizers and helpers, however, room rental, stationery, and guest refreshments are costs incurred and underwritten by members of ARPICO. Therefore to be fair, all audience participants are asked to donate to the best of their ability at the door or via EventBrite to “help” defray costs of the event.

FAQs

  • Where can I contact the organizer with any questions? info@arpico.ca
  • Do I have to bring my printed ticket to the event? No, you do not. Your name will be on our Registration List at the Check-in Desk.
  • Is my registration/ticket transferrable? If you are unable to attend, another person may use your ticket. Please send us an email at info@arpico.ca of this substitution to correct our audience Registration List and to prepare guest name tags.
  • Can I update my registration information? Yes. If you have any questions, contact us at info@arpico.ca
  • I am having trouble using EventBrite and cannot reserve my ticket(s). Can someone at ARPICO help me with my ticket reservation? Of course, simply send your ticket request to us at info@arpico.ca so we help you.

What are my transport/parking options?

  • Bus/Train: The Canada Line Yaletown Skytrain station is a 1 minute walk from the Roundhouse Community Centre.
  • Parking: Pay Parking is underground at the community centre.  Access is available via Drake Street.

With regard to the Canadian mine and neutrino experiments, I hunted down a little more information (from an October 6, 2015 article by Kate Allen for thestar.com), Note: A link has been removed,

Canadian physicist Arthur B. McDonald has won the Nobel Prize for discoveries about the behaviour of a mysterious solar particle, teased from an experiment buried two kilometres below Sudbury [Ontario].

The Queen’s University professor emeritus was honoured for co-discovering that elusive particles known as neutrinos can change their identity — or “oscillate” — as they travel from the sun. It proved that neutrinos must have mass, a finding that upset the Standard Model of particle physics and opened new avenues for research into the fundamental properties of the universe.

McDonald, 72, shares the prize with Takaaki Kajita, whose Japanese collaboration made the same discovery with slightly different methods.

To measure solar neutrinos, McDonald and a 130-person international team built a massive detector in an operational copper mine southwest of Sudbury. …

To solve this problem, McDonald and his colleagues dreamt up SNO. Deep in an INCO mine (now owned by Vale), protected from cosmic radiation constantly bombarding the earth’s surface, the scientists installed a 12-metre-wide acrylic vessel filled with 1,000 tonnes of ultra-pure heavy water. The vessel was surrounded by a geodesic sphere equipped with 9,456 light sensors. The whole thing was sunk in a 34-metre-high cavity filled with regular water.

When neutrinos hit the heavy water, an event that occurred about 10 times a day, they emitted a flash of light, which researchers could analyze to measure the particles’ properties.

Allen’s article has more details for anyone who might want to read up on neutrinos. Regardless, I’m sure Dr.Giampa is fully prepared to guide the uninitiated into the mysteries of the universe as they pertain to dark matter, neutrinos, and ultra-cold neutrons.

Dancing quantum entanglement (Ap. 20 – 22, 2017) and performing mathematics (Ap. 26 – 30, 2017) in Vancouver, Canada

I have listings for two art/science events in Vancouver (Canada).

Dance, poetry and quantum entanglement

From April 20, 2017 (tonight) – April 22, 2017, there will be 8 p.m. performances of Lesley Telford’s ‘Three Sets/Relating At A Distance; My tongue, your ear / If / Spooky Action at a Distance (phase 1)’ at the Scotiabank Dance Centre, 677 Davie St, Yes, that third title is a reference to Einstein’s famous phrase describing his response of the concept of quantum entanglement.

An April 19, 2017 article by Janet Smith for the Georgia Straight features the dancer’s description of the upcoming performances,

One of the clearest definitions of quantum entanglement—a phenomenon Albert Einstein dubbed “spooky action at a distance”—can be found in a vampire movie.

In Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive Tom Hiddleston’s depressed rock-star bloodsucker explains it this way to Tilda Swinton’s Eve, his centuries-long partner: “When you separate an entwined particle and you move both parts away from the other, even at opposite ends of the universe, if you alter or affect one, the other will be identically altered or affected.”

In fact, it was by watching the dark love story that Vancouver dance artist Lesley Telford learned about quantum entanglement—in which particles are so closely connected that they cannot act independently of one another, no matter how much space lies between them. She became fascinated not just with the scientific possibilities of the concept but with the romantic ones. …

 “I thought, ‘What a great metaphor,’ ” the choreographer tells the Straight over sushi before heading into a Dance Centre studio. “It’s the idea of quantum entanglement and how that could relate to human entanglement.…It’s really a metaphor for human interactions.”

First, though, as is so often the case with Telford, she needed to form those ideas into words. So she approached poet Barbara Adler to talk about the phenomenon, and then to have her build poetry around it—text that the writer will perform live in Telford’s first full evening of work here.

“Barbara talked a lot about how you feel this resonance with people that have been in your life, and how it’s tied into romantic connections and love stories,” Telford explains. “As we dig into it, it’s become less about that and more of an underlying vibration in the work; it feels like we’ve gone beyond that starting point.…I feel like she has a way of making it so down-to-earth and it’s given us so much food to work with. Are we in control of the universe or is it in control of us?”

Spooky Action at a Distance, a work for seven dancers, ends up being a string of duets that weave—entangle—into other duets. …

There’s more information about the performance, which concerns itself with more than quantum entanglement in the Scotiabank Dance Centre’s event webpage,

Lesley Telford’s choreography brings together a technically rigorous vocabulary and a thought-provoking approach, refined by her years dancing with Nederlands Dans Theater and creating for companies at home and abroad, most recently Ballet BC. This triple bill features an excerpt of a new creation inspired by Einstein’s famous phrase “spooky action at a distance”, referring to particles that are so closely linked, they share the same existence: a collaboration with poet Barbara Adler, the piece seeks to extend the theory to human connections in our phenomenally interconnected world. The program also includes a new extended version of If, a trio based on Anne Carson’s poem, and the duet My tongue, your ear, with text by Wislawa Szymborska.

Here’s what appears to be an excerpt from a rehearsal for ‘Spooky Action …’,

I’m not super fond of the atonal music/sound they’re using. The voice you hear is Adler’s and here’s more about Barbara Adler from her Wikipedia entry (Note: Links have been removed),

Barbara Adler is a musician, poet, and storyteller based in Vancouver, British Columbia. She is a past Canadian Team Slam Champion, was a founding member of the Vancouver Youth Slam, and a past CBC Poetry Face Off winner.[1]

She was a founding member of the folk band The Fugitives with Brendan McLeod, C.R. Avery and Mark Berube[2][3] until she left the band in 2011 to pursue other artistic ventures. She was a member of the accordion shout-rock band Fang, later Proud Animal, and works under the pseudonym Ten Thousand Wolves.[4][5][6][7][8]

In 2004 she participated in the inaugural Canadian Festival of Spoken Word, winning the Spoken Wordlympics with her fellow team members Shane Koyczan, C.R. Avery, and Brendan McLeod.[9][10] In 2010 she started on The BC Memory Game, a traveling storytelling project based on the game of memory[11] and has also been involved with the B.C. Schizophrenia Society Reach Out Tour for several years.[12][13][14] She is of Czech-Jewish descent.[15][16]

Barbara Adler has her bachelor’s degree and MFA from Simon Fraser University, with a focus on songwriting, storytelling, and community engagement.[17][18] In 2015 she was a co-star in the film Amerika, directed by Jan Foukal,[19][20] which premiered at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.[21]

Finally, Telford is Artist in Residence at the Dance Centre and TRIUMF, Canada’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics and accelerator-based science.

To buy tickets ($32 or less with a discount), go here. Telford will be present on April 21, 2017 for a post-show talk.

Pi Theatre’s ‘Long Division’

This theatrical performance of concepts in mathematics runs from April 26 – 30, 2017 (check here for the times as they vary) at the Annex at 823 Seymour St.  From the Georgia Straight’s April 12, 2017 Arts notice,

Mathematics is an art form in itself, as proven by Pi Theatre’s number-charged Long Division. This is a “refreshed remount” of Peter Dickinson’s ambitious work, one that circles around seven seemingly unrelated characters (including a high-school math teacher, a soccer-loving imam, and a lesbian bar owner) bound together by a single traumatic incident. Directed by Richard Wolfe, with choreography by Lesley Telford and musical score by Owen Belton, it’s a multimedia, movement-driven piece that has a strong cast. …

Here’s more about the play from Pi Theatre’s Long Division page,

Long Division uses text, multimedia, and physical theatre to create a play about the mathematics of human connection.

Long Division focuses on seven characters linked – sometimes directly, sometimes more obliquely – by a sequence of tragic events. These characters offer lessons on number theory, geometry and logic, while revealing aspects of their inner lives, and collectively the nature of their relationships to one another.

Playwright: Peter Dickinson
Director: Richard Wolfe
Choreographer: Lesley Telford, Inverso Productions
Composer: Owen Belton
Assistant Director: Keltie Forsyth

Cast:  Anousha Alamian, Jay Clift, Nicco Lorenzo Garcia, Jennifer Lines, Melissa Oei, LInda Quibell & Kerry Sandomirsky

Costume Designer: Connie Hosie
Lighting Designer: Jergus Oprsal
Set Designer: Lauchlin Johnston
Projection Designer: Jamie Nesbitt
Production Manager: Jayson Mclean
Stage Manager: Jethelo E. Cabilete
Assistant Projection Designer: Cameron Fraser
Lighting Design Associate: Jeff Harrison

Dates/Times: April 26 – 29 at 8pm, April 29 and 30 at 2pm
Student performance on April 27 at 1pm

A Talk-Back will take place after the 2pm show on April 29th.

Shawn Conner engaged the playwright, Peter Dickinson in an April 20, 2017 Q&A (question and answer) for the Vancouver Sun,

Q: Had you been working on Long Division for a long time?

A: I’d been working on it for about five years. I wrote a previous play called The Objecthood of Chairs, which has a similar style in that I combine lecture performance with physical and dance theatre. There are movement scores in both pieces.

In that first play, I told the story of two men and their relationship through the history of chair design. It was a combination of mining my research about that and trying to craft a story that was human and where the audience could find a way in. When I was thinking about a subject for a new play, I took the profession of one of the characters in that first play, who was a math teacher, and said, “Let’s see what happens to his character, let’s see where he goes after the breakup of his relationship.”

At first, I wrote it (Long Division) in an attempt at completely real, kitchen-sink naturalism, and it was a complete disaster. So I went back into this lecture-style performance.

Q: Long Division is set in a bar. Is the setting left over from that attempt at realism?

A: I guess so. It’s kind of a meta-theatrical play in the sense that the characters address the audience, and they’re aware they’re in a theatrical setting. One of the characters is an actress, and she comments on the connection between mathematics and theatre.

Q: This is being called a “refreshed” remount. What’s changed since its first run 

A: It’s mostly been cuts, and some massaging of certain sections. And I think it’s a play that actually needs a little distance.

Like mathematics, the patterns only reveal themselves at a remove. I think I needed that distance to see where things were working and where they could be better. So it’s a gift for me to be given this opportunity, to make things pop a little more and to make the math, which isn’t meant to be difficult, more understandable and relatable.

You may have noticed that Lesley Telford from Spooky Action is also choreographer for this production. I gather she’s making a career of art/science pieces, at least for now.

In the category of ‘Vancouver being a small town’, Telford lists a review of one of her pieces,  ‘AUDC’s Season Finale at The Playhouse’, on her website. Intriguingly, the reviewer is Peter Dickinson who in addition to being the playwright with whom she has collaborated for Pi Theatre’s ‘Long Division’ is also the Director of SFU’s (Simon Fraser University’s) Institute for Performance Studies. I wonder how many more ways these two crisscross professionally? Personally and for what it’s worth, it might be a good idea for Telford (and Dickinson, if he hasn’t already done so) to make readers aware of their professional connections when there’s a review at stake.

Final comment: I’m not sure how quantum entanglement or mathematics with the pieces attributed to concepts from those fields but I’m sure anyone attempting to make the links will find themselves stimulated.

ETA April 21, 2017: I’m adding this event even though the tickets are completely subscribed. There will be a standby line the night of the event (from the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies The Hidden Beauty of Mathematics event page,

02 May 2017

7:00 pm (doors open at 6:00 pm)

The Vogue Theatre

918 Granville St.

Vancouver, BC

Register

Good luck!

Two May 31, 2016 talks (Why nuclear power is necessary and DNA is not destiny) in Vancouver, Canada

Both the upcoming science talks in Vancouver are scheduled for May 31, 2016. Isn’t that always the way?

Why nuclear power is necessary

This talk is being held by ARPICO (Society of Italian Researchers & Professionals in Western Canada). From the ARPICO event page,

Why Nuclear Power is Necessary

Presenter

Patrick Walden graduated with a B.Sc. in Physics from UBC and a Ph.D in Particle Physics from Caltech. His Post Doctoral research was done at the Stanford University Linear Accelerator (SLAC), and since 1974 he has been at TRIUMF here in Vancouver. Patrick has been active in the fields of pion photo-production, meson spectroscopy, the dynamics of pion production from nuclei, and nuclear astrophysics.

Abstract

Nuclear power is the second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions-free energy in the world. It supplies approximately 5% of the world’s total energy demand. Presently, human activity is on the brink of initiating a global greenhouse climate catastrophe unless we can limit our greenhouse gas emissions.

In this talk, Dr. Patrick Walden will examine the concerns about nuclear power and the reasons why, contrary to public perception, nuclear power is one of the safest, most economical, plentiful, and greenest sources of energy available.

Logistics

  • May 31, 2016 – 7:00pm
  • Roundhouse Community Centre – Room B – (181 Roundhouse Mews, Vancouver BC V6Z2W3)
  • Underground pay parking is available, access off Drake St. south of Pacific Blvd.
    Admission by donation. Q&A and complimentary refreshments follow. Registration is highly recommended as seating is limited. RSVP at info@arpico.ca or at EventBrite by May 28th, 2016.

A map for the location can be found here.

There is a Skytrain station nearbyYaletown-Roundhouse Canada Line Station

DNA is not destiny

This month’s Café Scientifique talk is being held in downtown Vancouver at Yaggers (433 W. Pender St.). Details of the talk are (from the May 13, 2016 email announcement,

… Our speaker for the evening will be Dr. Steven Heine, a Professor in the Department of Psychology at UBC [University of British Columbia]. The title of his talk is:

DNA is Not Destiny: How Essences Distort how we Think about Genes

People the world over are essentialist thinkers – they are attracted to the idea that hidden essences make things as they are. And because genetic concepts remind people of essences, they tend to think of genes in ways similar to essences. That is, people tend to think about genetic causes as immutable, deterministic, homogenous, discrete, and natural.  Dr. Heine will discuss how our essentialist biases lead people to think differently about sex, race, crime, eugenics, and disease whenever these are described in genetic terms. Moreover, Dr. Heine will discuss how our essentialistic biases make people vulnerable to the sensationalist hype that has emerged with the genomic revolution and access to direct-to-consumer genotyping services.

Logistics

Tuesday May 31st, 7:30pm at Yagger’s Downtown (433 W Pender).

I have found a little more information about Dr. Steven Heine and his work (from his University of British Columbia webpage),

Our lab is currently working on three distinct research programs, which we refer to as Cultural Psychology, Meaning Maintenance, and Genetic Essentialism.

Our third research program on genetic esssentialism considers how people understand essences and genetic foundations for human behavior. We propose that encounters with genetic explanations for human outcomes prompts people to think of those outcomes in essentiialized ways, by viewing those outcomes as more deterministic, immutable, and fatalistic. For example, we find that women are more vulnerable to stereotype threat when they hear of genetic reasons for why men outperform women in math than when they hear of environmental reasons for this difference. We also find that men are more tolerant of sex crimes when they learn of genetic basis for sexual motivations than when they hear of social-constructivist accounts. We are conducting several studies to explore the ways that people respond to genetic accounts for human conditions.

Have fun whichever one you choose to attend.

Café Scientifique on March 29, 2016 *(cancelled)* and a fully booked talk on April 14, 2016 in Vancouver, Canada

There are two upcoming science events in Vancouver.

Café Scientifique

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*Cancellation notice received via email March 29, 2016 at 1430 hours PDT:

Our sincerest apologies, but we have just received word that The Railway Club is shutting it’s doors for good, effective immediately.  Unfortunately, because of this tonight’s event is cancelled.  We will do our best to re-schedule the talk in the near future once we have found a new venue.

The Tues., March 29, 2016 (tonight) Café Scientifique talk at 7:30 pm,  Café Scientifique, in the back room of The Railway Club (2nd floor of 579 Dunsmuir St. [at Seymour St.]), has one of the more peculiar descriptions for a talk that I’ve seen for this group. From a March 1, 2016 announcement (received via e-mail),

Our speaker for the evening will be Dr. Jerilynn Prior.  Prior is Professor of Endocrinology and Metabolism at the University of British Columbia, founder and scientific director of the Centre for Menstrual Cycle and Ovulation Research (CeMCOR), director of the BC Center of the Canadian Multicenter Osteoporosis Study (CaMOS), and a past president of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research.  The title of her talk is:

 

Is Perimenopause Estrogen Deficiency?

Sorting engrained misinformation about women’s midlife reproductive transition

43 years old with teenagers a full-time executive director of a not for profit is not sleeping, she wakes soaked a couple of times a night, not every night but especially around the time her period comes. As it does frequently—it is heavy, even flooding. Her sexual interest is virtually gone and she feels dry when she tries.

Her family doctor offered her The Pill. When she took it she got very sore breasts, ankle swelling and high blood pressure. Her brain feels fuzzy, she’s getting migraines, gaining weight and just can’t cope. . . .

What’s going on? Does she need estrogen “replacement”?  If yes, why when she’s still getting flow? Does The Pill work for other women? What do we know about the what, why, how long and how to help symptomatic perimenopausal women?

This description seems more appropriate for a workshop on women’s health for doctors and/or women going through ‘the change’.

Unveiling the Universe Lecture Series

This is a fully booked event but I suppose there’s always the possibility of a ticket at the last minute. From the 100 Years of General Relativity: From the Big Bang to Black Holes, Gravitational Waves and Interstellar on the University of British Columbia (UBC) website,

We invite you to join us for an evening with renowned theoretical physicist Kip Thorne.

100 years ago, Albert Einstein formulated his wildly successful general theory of relativity—a set of physical laws that attribute gravity to the warping of time and space. It has been tested with high precision in the solar system and in binary pulsars and explains the expansion of the universe. It even predicts black holes and gravitational waves. When combined with quantum theory, relativity provides a tentative framework for understanding the universe’s big-bang birth. And the equations that made Einstein famous have become embedded in our popular culture via, for example, the science fiction movie Interstellar.

In a captivating talk accessible to science enthusiasts of all ages, Professor Kip Thorne will use Interstellar to illustrate some of relativity’s deepest ideas, including black holes and the recent discovery of gravitational waves.

Professor Thorne of the California Institute of Technology is one of the world’s foremost experts on the astrophysics implications of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, including black holes—an expertise he used to great effect as scientific advisor to the movieInterstellar. Thorne was also one of the three principal scientists (with Rainer Weiss and Ron Drever) behind the LIGO experiment that recently detected gravitational waves, an achievement most expect will earn them a Nobel Prize.

Here are the details from the event page,

Speaker:

Dr. Kip Thorne

Event Date and Time:

Thu, 2016-04-14 19:0020:30

Location:

Science World (1455 Quebec St )

Local Contact:

Theresa Liao

Intended Audience:

Public

Despite the fact that are no tickets, here’s the registration link (in the hope they make a waiting list available) and more logistics,

Free Registration Required

Doors Open at 6:00PM
Lecture begins at 7:00pm

This event is organized by Science World, TRIUMF, and the UBC Department of Physics & Astronomy. It is part of UBC’s Centennial Celebration.

Sadly, I did not receive details and a link for registration in a more timely fashion although I was able to give readers a heads-up in a Jan. 22, 2016 posting. (scroll down about 25% of the way down).

Science events (Einstein, getting research to patients, sleep, and art/science) in Vancouver (Canada), Jan. 23 – 28, 2016

There are five upcoming science events in seven days (Jan. 23 – 28, 2016) in the Vancouver area.

Einstein Centenary Series

The first is a Saturday morning, Jan. 23, 2016 lecture, the first for 2016 in a joint TRIUMF (Canada’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics), UBC (University of British Columbia), and SFU (Simon Fraser University) series featuring Einstein’s  work and its implications. From the event brochure (pdf), which lists the entire series,

TRIUMF, UBC and SFU are proud to present the 2015-2016 Saturday morning lecture series on the frontiers of modern physics. These free lectures are a level appropriate for high school students and members of the general public.

Parallel lecture series will be held at TRIUMF on the UBC South Campus, and at SFU Surrey Campus.

Lectures start at 10:00 am and 11:10 am. Parking is available.

For information, registration and directions, see :
http://www.triumf.ca/saturday-lectures

January 23, 2016 TRIUMF Auditorium (UBC, Vancouver)
1. General Relativity – the theory (Jonathan Kozaczuk, TRIUMF)
2. Einstein and Light: stimulated emission, photoelectric effect and quantum theory (Mark Van Raamsdonk, UBC)

January 30, 2016 SFU Surrey Room 2740 (SFU, Surrey Campus)

1. General Relativity – the theory (Jonathan Kozaczuk, TRIUMF)
2. Einstein and Light: stimulated emission, photoelectric effect and quantum theory (Mark Van Raamsdonk, UBC)

I believe these lectures are free. One more note, they will be capping off this series with a special lecture by Kip Thorne (astrophysicist and consultant for the movie Interstellar) at Science World, on Thursday, April 14, 2016. More about that * at a closer date.

Café Scientifique

On Tuesday, January 26, 2016 at 7:30 pm in the back room of The Railway Club (2nd floor of 579 Dunsmuir St. [at Seymour St.]), Café Scientifique will be hosting a talk about science and serving patients (from the Jan. 5, 2016 announcement),

Our speakers for the evening will be Dr. Millan Patel and Dr. Shirin Kalyan.  The title of their talk is:

Helping Science to Serve Patients

Science in general and biotechnology in particular are auto-catalytic. That is, they catalyze their own evolution and so generate breakthroughs at an exponentially increasing rate.  The experience of patients is not exponentially getting better, however.  This talk, with a medical geneticist and an immunologist who believe science can deliver far more for patients, will focus on structural and cultural impediments in our system and ways they and others have developed to either lower or leapfrog the barriers. We hope to engage the audience in a highly interactive discussion to share thoughts and perspectives on this important issue.

There is additional information about Dr. Millan Patel here and Dr. Shirin Kalyan here. It would appear both speakers are researchers and academics and while I find the emphasis on the patient and the acknowledgement that medical research benefits are not being delivered in quantity or quality to patients, it seems odd that they don’t have a clinician (a doctor who deals almost exclusively with patients as opposed to two researchers) to add to their perspective.

You may want to take a look at my Jan. 22, 2016 ‘open science’ and Montreal Neurological Institute posting for a look at how researchers there are responding to the issue.

Curiosity Collider

This is an art/science event from an organization that sprang into existence sometime during summer 2015 (my July 7, 2015 posting featuring Curiosity Collider).

When: 8:00pm on Wednesday, January 27, 2016. Door opens at 7:30pm.
Where: Café Deux Soleils. 2096 Commercial Drive, Vancouver, BC (Google Map).
Cost: $5.00 cover (sliding scale) at the door. Proceeds will be used to cover the cost of running this event, and to fund future Curiosity Collider events.

Part I. Speakers

Part II. Open Mic

  • 90 seconds to share your art-science ideas. Think they are “ridiculous”? Well, we think it could be ridiculously awesome – we are looking for creative ideas!
  • Don’t have an idea (yet)? Contribute by sharing your expertise.
  • Chat with other art-science enthusiasts, strike up a conversation to collaborate, all disciplines/backgrounds welcome.
  • Want to showcase your project in the future? Participate in our fall art-science competition (more to come)!

Follow updates on twitter via @ccollider or #CollideConquer

Good luck on the open mic (should you have a project)!

Brain Talks

This particular Brain Talk event is taking place at Vancouver General Hospital (VGH; there is also another Brain Talks series which takes place at the University of British Columbia). Yes, members of the public can attend the VGH version; they didn’t throw me out the last time I was there. Here’s more about the next VGH Brain Talks,

Sleep: biological & pathological perspectives

Thursday, Jan 28, 6:00pm @ Paetzold Auditorium, Vancouver General Hospital

Speakers:

Peter Hamilton, Sleep technician ~ Sleep Architecture

Dr. Robert Comey, MD ~ Sleep Disorders

Dr. Maia Love, MD ~ Circadian Rhythms

Panel discussion and wine and cheese reception to follow!

Please RSVP here

You may want to keep in mind that the event is organized by people who don’t organize events often. Nice people but you may need to search for crackers for your cheese and your wine comes out of a box (and I think it might have been self-serve the time I attended).

What a fabulous week we have ahead of us—Happy Weekend!

*’when’ removed from the sentence on March 28, 2016.

#BCTECH: being at the Summit (Jan. 18-19, 2016)

#BCTECH Summit 2016*, a joint event between the province of British Columbia (BC, Canada) and the BC Innovation Council (BCIC), a crown corporation formerly known as the Science Council of British Columbia, launched on Jan. 18, 2016. I have written a preview (Jan. 17, 2016 post) and a commentary on the new #BCTECH strategy (Jan. 19, 2016 posting) announced by British Columbia Premier, Christy Clark, on the opening day (Jan. 18, 2016) of the summit.

I was primarily interested in the trade show/research row/technology showcase aspect of the summit focusing (but not exclusively) on nanotechnology. Here’s what I found,

Nano at the Summit

  • Precision NanoSystems: fabricates equipment which allows researchers to create polymer nanoparticles for delivering medications.

One of the major problems with creating nanoparticles is ensuring a consistent size and rapid production. According to Shell Ip, a Precision NanoSystems field application scientist, their NanoAssemblr Platform has solved the consistency problem and a single microfluidic cartridge can produce 15 ml in two minutes. Cartridges can run in parallel for maximum efficiency when producing nanoparticles in greater quantity.

The NanoAssemblr Platform is in use in laboratories around the world (I think the number is 70) and you can find out more on the company’s About our technology webpage,

The NanoAssemblr™ Platform

The microfluidic approach to particle formulation is at the heart of the NanoAssemblr Platform. This well-controlled process mediates bottom-up self-assembly of nanoparticles with reproducible sizes and low polydispersity. Users can control size by process and composition, and adjust parameters such as mixing ratios, flow rate and lipid composition in order to fine-tune nanoparticle size, encapsulation efficiency and much more. The system technology enables manufacturing scale-up through microfluidic reactor parallelization similar to the arraying of transistors on an integrated chip. Superior design ensures that the platform is fast and easy to use with a software controlled manufacturing process. This usability allows for the simplified transfer of manufacturing protocols between sites, which accelerates development, reduces waste and ultimately saves money. Precision NanoSystems’ flagship product is the NanoAssemblr™ Benchtop Instrument, designed for rapid prototyping of novel nanoparticles. Preparation time on the system is streamlined to approximately one minute, with the ability to complete 30 formulations per day in the hands of any user.

The company is located on property known as the Endowment Lands or, more familiarly, the University of British Columbia (UBC).

A few comments before moving on, being able to standardize the production of medicine-bearing nanoparticles is a tremendous step forward which is going to help scientists dealing with other issues. Despite all the talk in the media about delivering nanoparticles with medication directly to diseased cells, there are transport issues: (1) getting the medicine to the right location/organ and (2) getting the medicine into the cell. My Jan. 12, 2016 posting featured a project with Malaysian scientists and a team at Harvard University who are tackling the transport and other nanomedicine) issues as they relate to the lung. As well, I have a Nov. 26, 2015 posting which explores a controversy about nanoparticles getting past the ‘cell walls’ into the nucleus of the cell.

The next ‘nano’ booths were,

  • 4D Labs located at Simon Fraser University (SFU) was initially hailed as a nanotechnology facility but these days they’re touting themselves as an ‘advanced materials’ facility. Same thing, different branding.

They advertise services including hands-on training for technology companies and academics. There is a nanoimaging facility and nanofabrication facility, amongst others.

I spoke with their operations manager, Nathaniel Sieb who mentioned a few of the local companies that use their facilities. (1) Nanotech Security (featured here most recently in a Dec. 29, 2015 post), an SFU spinoff company, does some of their anticounterfeiting research work at 4D Labs. (2) Switch Materials (a smart window company, electrochromic windows if memory serves) also uses the facilities. It is Neil Branda’s (4D Labs Executive Director) company and I have been waiting impatiently (my May 14, 2010 post was my first one about Switch) for either his or someone else’s electrochromic windows (they could eliminate or reduce the need for air conditioning during the hotter periods and reduce the need for heat in the colder periods) to come to market. Seib tells me, I’ll have to wait longer for Switch. (3) A graduate student was presenting his work at the booth, a handheld diagnostic device that can be attached to a smartphone to transmit data to the cloud. While the first application is for diabetics, there are many other possibilities. Unfortunately, glucose means you need to produce blood for the test when I suggested my preference for saliva the student explained some of the difficulties. Apparently, your saliva changes dynamically and frequently and something as simple as taking a sip of orange juice could result in a false reading. Our conversation (mine, Seib’s and the student’s) also drifted over into the difficulties of bringing products to market. Sadly, we were not able to solve that problem in our 10 minute conversation.

  • FPInnovations is a scientific research centre and network for the forestry sector. They had a display near their booth which was like walking into a peculiar forest (I was charmed). The contrast with the less imaginative approaches all around was striking.

FPInnovation helped to develop cellulose nanocrystals (CNC), then called nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC), and I was hoping to be updated about CNC and about the spinoff company Celluforce. The researcher I spoke to was from Sweden and his specialty was business development. He didn’t know much about CNC in Canada and when I commented on how active Sweden has been its pursuit of a CNC application, he noted Finland has been the most active. The researcher noted that making the new materials being derived from the forest, such as CNC, affordable and easily produced for use in applications that have yet to be developed are all necessities and challenges. He mentioned that cultural changes also need to take place. Canadians are accustomed to slicing away and discarding most of the tree instead of using as much of it as possible. We also need to move beyond the construction and pulp & paper sectors (my Feb. 15, 2012 posting featured nanocellulose research in Sweden where sludge was the base material).

Other interests at the Summit

I visited:

  • “The Wearable Lower Limb Anthropomorphic Exoskeleton (WLLAE) – a lightweight, battery-operated and ergonomic robotic system to help those with mobility issues improve their lives. The exoskeleton features joints and links that correspond to those of a human body and sync with motion. SFU has designed, manufactured and tested a proof-of-concept prototype and the current version can mimic all the motions of hip joints.” The researchers (Siamak Arzanpour and Edward Park) pointed out that the ability to mimic all the motions of the hip is a big difference between their system and others which only allow the leg to move forward or back. They rushed the last couple of months to get this system ready for the Summit. In fact, they received their patent for the system the night before (Jan. 17, 2016) the Summit opened.

It’s the least imposing of the exoskeletons I’ve seen (there’s a description of one of the first successful exoskeletons in a May 20, 2014 posting; if you scroll down to the end you’ll see an update about the device’s unveiling at the 2014 World Cup [soccer/football] in Brazil).

Unfortunately, there aren’t any pictures of WLLAE yet and the proof-of-concept version may differ significantly from the final version. This system could be used to help people regain movement (paralysis/frail seniors) and I believe there’s a possibility it could be used to enhance human performance (soldiers/athletes). The researchers still have some significant hoops to jump before getting to the human clinical trial stage. They need to refine their apparatus, ensure that it can be safely operated, and further develop the interface between human and machine. I believe WLLAE is considered a neuroprosthetic device. While it’s not a fake leg or arm, it enables movement (prosthetic) and it operates on brain waves (neuro). It’s a very exciting area of research, consequently, there’s a lot of international competition. [ETA January 3, 2024: I’m pretty sure I got the neuroprosthetic part wrong]

  • Delightfully, after losing contact for a while, I reestablished it with the folks (Sean Lee, Head External Relations and Jim Hanlon, Chief Administrative Officer) at TRIUMF (Canada’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics). It’s a consortium of 19 Canadian research institutions (12 full members and seven associate members).

It’s a little disappointing that TRIUMF wasn’t featured in the opening for the Summit since the institution houses theoretical, experimental, and applied science work. It’s a major BC (and Canada) science and technology success story. My latest post (July 16, 2015) about their work featured researchers from California (US) using the TRIUMF cyclotron for imaging nanoscale materials and, on the more practical side, there’s a Mar. 6, 2015 posting about their breakthrough for producing nuclear material-free medical isotopes. Plus, Maclean’s Magazine ran a Jan. 3, 2016 article by Kate Lunau profiling an ‘art/science’ project that took place at TRIUMF (Note: Links have been removed),

It’s not every day that most people get to peek inside a world-class particle physics lab, where scientists probe deep mysteries of the universe. In September [2015], Vancouver’s TRIUMF—home to the world’s biggest cyclotron, a type of particle accelerator—opened its doors to professional and amateur photographers, part of an event called Global Physics Photowalk 2015. (Eight labs around the world participated, including CERN [European particle physics laboratory], in Geneva, where the Higgs boson particle was famously discovered.)

Here’s the local (Vancouver) jury’s pick for the winning image (from the Nov. 4, 2015 posting [Winning Photographs Revealed] by Alexis Fong on the TRIUMF website),

Caption: DESCANT (at TRIUMF) neutron detector array composed of 70 hexagonal detectors Credit: Pamela Joe McFarlane

Caption: DESCANT (at TRIUMF) neutron detector array composed of 70 hexagonal detectors Credit: Pamela Joe McFarlane

With all those hexagons and a spherical shape, the DESCANT looks like a ‘buckyball’ or buckminsterfullerene or C60  to me.

I hope the next Summit features TRIUMF and/or some other endeavours which exemplify, Science, Technology, and Creativity in British Columbia and Canada.

Onto the last booth,

  • MITACS was originally one of the Canadian federal government’s Network Centres for Excellence projects. It was focused on mathematics, networking, and innovation but once the money ran out the organization took a turn. These days, it’s describing itself as (from their About page) “a national, not-for-profit organization that has designed and delivered research and training programs in Canada for 15 years. Working with 60 universities, thousands of companies, and both federal and provincial governments, we build partnerships that support industrial and social innovation in Canada.”Their Jan. 19, 2016 news release (coincidental with the #BCTECH Summit, Jan. 18 – 19, 2016?) features a new report about improving international investment in Canada,”Opportunities to improve Canada’s attractiveness for R&D investment were identified:1.Canada needs to better incentivize R&D by rebalancing direct and indirect support measures

    2.Canada requires a coordinated, client-centric approach to incentivizing R&D

    3.Canada needs to invest in training programs that grow the knowledge economy”

    Oddly, entrepreneurial/corporate/business types never have a problem with government spending when the money is coming to them; it’s only a problem when it’s social services.

    Back to MITACS, one of their more interesting (to me) projects was announced at the 2015 Canadian Science Policy Conference. MITACS has inaugurated a Canadian Science Policy Fellowships programme which in its first year (pilot) will see up up to 10 academics applying their expertise to policy-making while embedded in various federal government agencies. I don’t believe anything similar has occurred here in Canada although, if memory serves, the Brits have a similar programme.

    Finally, I offer kudos to Sherry Zhao, MITACS Business Development Specialist, the only person to ask me how her organization might benefit my business. Admittedly I didn’t talk to a lot of people but it’s striking to me that at an ‘innovation and business’ tech summit, only one person approached me about doing business.  Of course, I’m not a male aged between 25 and 55. So, extra kudos to Sherry Zhao and MITACS.

Christy Clark (Premier of British Columbia), in her opening comments, stated 2800 (they were expecting about 1000) had signed up for the #BCTECH Summit. I haven’t been able to verify that number or get other additional information, e.g., business deals, research breakthroughs, etc. announced at the Summit. Regardless, it was exciting to attend and find out about the latest and greatest on the BC scene.

I wish all the participants great and good luck and look forward to next year’s where perhaps we’ll here about how the province plans to help with the ‘manufacturing middle’ issue. For new products you need to have facilities capable of reproducing your devices at a speed that satisfies your customers; see my Feb. 10, 2014 post featuring a report on this and other similar issues from the US General Accountability Office.

*’BCTECH Summit 2016′ link added Jan. 21, 2016.

Science communication: clarity and dumbing down

The older and less polite term for this activity is ‘dumbing down’.  But, if I read Hamideh Emrani’s Nov. 20, 2015 post for the Signals blog (insiders’ perspective on the world of stem cells and regenerative medicine; [Canada] Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine website) and understand the video clip (embedded in Emrani’s post) featuring Alan Alda (actor and science afficionado and communicator) rightly, the word ‘clarity’ is now being used. I’m glad to see the change.

As Emrani hints in her Nov. 20, 2015 post , it’s very difficult to gauge your audience’s interest level and knowledge about a topic,

I completely understand the challenge for a scientist to not use scientific language and not assume what they know is common knowledge. I still find myself adding jargon to my writing. But we all know the importance of keeping the audience engaged and the old saying: “practice makes perfect.”

Her comments were made in the context of a recent conference she had attended and observations she’d made about the presentations.

In the interest of not repeating Emrani’s post, I’m going to focus on some different aspects of science communication and audiences. In all the talk about science communication, there’s very little about communicating to audiences who do have some or lot of science education. So, here goes. Trying to judge your audience’s knowledge level can be tricky assuming you’re not at a specialized conference where you’d expect people to have the basics. Even an audience full of scientists can be tricky, if they have different specialties.

For example, some years ago I was told that a job for a technical writer was being opened up at TRIUMF, Canada’s National Laboratory for  Particle and Nuclear Physics. According to my information, they wanted a technical writer not to write manuals but to create a situation where TRIUMF’s scientists from various specialties would be forced to explain their work to someone who wasn’t a specialist. Apparently, these TRIUMF experts weren’t able to read each other’s written materials or (presumably) understand their presentations due to an overabundance of expertise and jargon on the part of the writer/presenter and a reluctance to admit to difficulties with understanding on the part of the differently expert reader/listener.

Of course, it’s all possible to aim too low. Years ago I was working in a local health department and learned this about an AIDS educator who’d been hired for her expertise to assist health professionals (mostly nurses) in their work with AIDS patients.

Shortly after starting with the health department, she gave a 2-day workshop and made a disastrous choice. The nurses had been dealing with AIDS patients for a few years and she gave a workshop designed for people who knew absolutely nothing about the disease thereby insulting the nurses’ expertise. Realizing her error on the first day, she recalibrated her workshop for the second.  (BTW, It’s very hard to do that to a presentation partway through.) Unfortunately, a chunk of her audience had left. Worse yet, I heard the story more than a year later in the context of an explanation of why a number of nurses were shunning her professionally.

Getting back to clarity, here’s Alan Alda,

As Emrani notes, practice helps. If you have time, don’t forget to check out her where she has more to say and another embedded video.

A May 27, 2015 presentation on Bruno Pontecorvo in Vancouver (Canada)

A movie about Bruno Pontecorvo (a mover and shaker in the world of neutrino physics) is being hosted by ARPICO (Society of Italian Researchers and Professionals in Western Canada) on Wednesday, May 27, 2015. From a May 12, 2015 ARPICO announcement,

Maksimovic – The story of Bruno Pontecorvo

Prof. Samoil Bilenky will introduce a short movie on the life of Bruno Pontecorvo.

The movie will trace the main points of Bruno Pontecorvo’s life, a nuclear physicist, born in 1913 in Pisa (Italy) and dead in 1993 in Dubna (Russia).
Samoil Bilenky worked with Pontecorvo from 1975 until 1989 in Dubna where they developed the theory of neutrino masses and oscillations and proposed experiments on the search for neutrino oscillations.

The impact of Bruno Pontecorvo on neutrino physics is well recognized in the Scientific Community.

Prof. Samoil Bilenky obtained his doctoral degree at JINR (Joint Institute for Nuclear Research) in Dubna and collaborated with Bruno Pontecorvo for over a decade. He was also professor at the Moscow State University and later at SISSA (Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati) in Italy. He has been a visiting scientist at TRIUMF (Canada’s National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics) in Canada, at DESY (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron) in Germany, at the University of Valencia (Spain), the University of Turin (Italy) and at the TU Munich (Germany).
In 2002 prof. Samoil Bilenky received the Bruno Pontecorvo Prize and in 1999 he received the Humboldt Research Award.

Here are location and other event details,

The story of Bruno Pontecorvo
  • May 27, 2015 – 7:15pm
  • Activity Room, Main Level – 480 Broughton St, Vancouver, BC
  • Underground pay parking is available – EasyPark – Lot 64
    Everyone is invited to a no-host dinner with the Board of Directors afterwards.

Enjoy!

South Korea announces plans to commercialize nanotechnology

A May 4, 2015 article by Jung Suk-yee for Business Korea describes the South Korean government’s nanotechnology investment plans for 2015,

The Korean government will invest 177.2 billion won (US$164.2 million) in the industrialization of nanotechnology this year. The budget goes to seven techniques for industrial applications, including of that for manufacturing 3D nano-electronic devices used in intelligent robots and wearable smart devices, and industry infrastructure for production performance evaluation and the like. Strategic items are also selected so that small firms, which account for 90 percent of the industry, can better compete in the global market.

The Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning and the Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy unveiled the plan on April 30 [2015] at the main office of CrucialTec located in Pangyo, Gyeonggi Province. “The global nanotech product market is estimated to reach US$3 trillion in size in 2020,” they explained, adding, “We will take up 20 percent of the market by means of large-scale investments.”

An April 30, 2015 news item on the Youhap News Agency website also makes the announcement while providing some context for and new details about the nanotechnology effort in South Korea,

South Korea is already one of the leading countries to have developed the advanced technology. The combined output of the country’s nano-convergence sector came to over 92 trillion won ($86 billion) in 2011, accounting for 6.1 percent of its total production.

The government will spend an additional [to the 177.2 billion won  announced earlier] 55 billion won this year to help develop nano-convergence companies and infrastructure that will include a new evaluation system to check the performance of any nanotechnology product, according to the ministry.

This announcement provides an interesting contrast to relatively recent Canadian announcements. As far as I’m aware the only Canadian research area as opposed to an individual institution such as the TRIUMF, Canada’s National Laboratory for  which benefits from serious infusions of cash is the ‘digital highway’ which merits being mentioned in the 2015 federal budget. The other science initiative specifically mentioned in the budget is TRIUMF (Canada’s National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics). For all the talk about commercializing science and technology there doesn’t seem to have been any specific mention in the budget although I have no doubt that various agencies received their allocations and are fully aware that they are expected to deliver on the government’s hopes in those respects. (My April 28, 2015 post offers more details about the science funding in the Canadian government’s 2015 federal budget.)