Tag Archives: Vancouver Telus World of Science

Art in the details: A look at the role of art in science—a Sept. 19, 2017 Café Scientifique event in Vancouver, Canada

The Sept. 19, 2017 Café Scientifique event, “Art in the Details A look at the role of art in science,” in Vancouver seems to be part of a larger neuroscience and the arts program at the University of British Columbia. First, the details about the Sept. 13, 2017 event from the eventful Vancouver webpage,

Café Scientifique – Art in the Details: A look at the role of art in science

Art in the Details: A look at the role of art in science With so much beauty in the natural world, why does the misconception that art and science are vastly different persist? Join us for discussion and dessert as we hear from artists, researchers and academic professionals about the role art has played in scientific research – from the formative work of Santiago Ramon Y Cajal to modern imaging, and beyond – and how it might help shape scientific understanding in the future. September 19th, 2017  7:00 – 9:00 pm (doors open at 6:45pm)  TELUS World of Science [also known as Science World], 1455 Quebec St., Vancouver, BC V6A 3Z7 Free Admission [emphasis mine] Experts Dr Carol-Ann Courneya Associate Professor in the Department of Cellular and Physiological Science and Assistant Dean of Student Affairs, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia   Dr Jason Snyder  Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia http://snyderlab.com/   Dr Steven Barnes Instructor and Assistant Head—Undergraduate Affairs, Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia http://stevenjbarnes.com/   Moderated By   Bruce Claggett Senior Managing Editor, NEWS 1130   This evening event is presented in collaboration with the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health. Please note: this is a private, adult-oriented event and TELUS World of Science will be closed during this discussion.

The Art in the Details event page on the Science World website provides a bit more information about the speakers (mostly in the form of links to their webpage),,

Experts

Dr Carol-Ann Courneya
Associate Professor in the Department of Cellular and Physiological Science and Assistant Dean of Student Affairs, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia

Dr Jason Snyder 

Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, University of British Columbi

Dr Steven Barnes

Instructor, Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia

Moderated By  

Bruce Claggett

Senior Managing Editor, NEWS 1130

Should you click though to obtain tickets from either the eventful Vancouver or Science World websites, you’ll find the event is sold out but perhaps the organizers will include a waitlist.

Even if you can’t get a ticket, there’s an exhibition of Santiago Ramon Y Cajal’s work (from the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health’s Beautiful brain’s webpage),

Drawings of Santiago Ramón y Cajal to be shown at UBC

Santiago Ramón y Cajal, injured Purkinje neurons, 1914, ink and pencil on paper. Courtesy of Instituto Cajal (CSIC).

Pictured: Santiago Ramón y Cajal, injured Purkinje neurons, 1914, ink and pencil on paper. Courtesy of Instituto Cajal (CSIC).

The Beautiful Brain is the first North American museum exhibition to present the extraordinary drawings of Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852–1934), a Spanish pathologist, histologist and neuroscientist renowned for his discovery of neuron cells and their structure, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1906. Known as the father of modern neuroscience, Cajal was also an exceptional artist. He combined scientific and artistic skills to produce arresting drawings with extraordinary scientific and aesthetic qualities.

A century after their completion, Cajal’s drawings are still used in contemporary medical publications to illustrate important neuroscience principles, and continue to fascinate artists and visual art audiences. Eighty of Cajal’s drawings will be accompanied by a selection of contemporary neuroscience visualizations by international scientists. The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery exhibition will also include early 20th century works that imaged consciousness, including drawings from Annie Besant’s Thought Forms (1901) and Charles Leadbeater’s The Chakras (1927), as well as abstract works by Lawren Harris that explored his interest in spirituality and mysticism.

After countless hours at the microscope, Cajal was able to perceive that the brain was made up of individual nerve cells or neurons rather than a tangled single web, which was only decisively proven by electron microscopy in the 1950s and is the basis of neuroscience today. His speculative drawings stemmed from an understanding of aesthetics in their compressed detail and lucid composition, as he laboured to clearly represent matter and processes that could not be seen.

In a special collaboration with the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and the VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation this project will encourage meaningful dialogue amongst artists, curators, scientists and scholars on concepts of neuroplasticity and perception. Public and Academic programs will address the emerging field of art and neuroscience and engage interdisciplinary research of scholars from the sciences and humanities alike.

“This is an incredible opportunity for the neuroscience and visual arts communities at the University and Vancouver,” says Dr. Brian MacVicar, who has been working diligently with Director Scott Watson at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and with his colleagues at the University of Minnesota for the past few years to bring this exhibition to campus. “Without Cajal’s impressive body of work, our understanding of the anatomy of the brain would not be so well-formed; Cajal’s legacy has been of critical importance to neuroscience teaching and research over the past century.”

A book published by Abrams accompanies the exhibition, containing full colour reproductions of all 80 of the exhibition drawings, commentary on each of the works and essays on Cajal’s life and scientific contributions, artistic roots and achievements and contemporary neuroscience imaging techniques.

Cajal’s work will be on display at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery from September 5 to December 3, 2017.

Join the UBC arts and neuroscience communities for a free symposium and dance performance celebrating The Beautiful Brain at UBC on September 7. [link removed]

The Beautiful Brain: The Drawings of Santiago Ramón y Cajal was developed by the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, University of Minnesota with the Instituto Cajal. The exhibition at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University British Columbia is presented in partnership with the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health with support from the VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation. We gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council and Belkin Curator’s Forum members.

The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery’s Beautiful Brain webpage has a listing of upcoming events associated with the exhibition as well as instructions on how to get there (if you click on About),

SEMINAR & READING GROUP: Plasticity at SFU Vancouver and 221A: Wednesdays, October 4, 18, November 1, 15 and 21 at 7 pm

CONVERSATION with Anthony Phillips and Timothy Taylor: Wednesday, October 11, 2017 at 7 pm

LECTURE with Catherine Malabou at the Liu Institute: Thursday, November 23 at 6 pm

CONCERT with UBC Contemporary Players: Friday, December 1 at 2 pm

Cajal was also an exceptional artist and studied as a teenager at the Academy of Arts in Huesca, Spain. He combined scientific and artistic skills to produce arresting drawings with extraordinary scientific and aesthetic qualities. A century after their completion, his drawings are still used in contemporary medical publications to illustrate important neuroscience principles, and continue to fascinate artists and visual art audiences. Eighty of Cajal’s drawings are accompanied by a selection of contemporary neuroscience visualizations by international scientists.

Organizationally, this seems a little higgledy piggledy with the Cafe Scientifique event found on some sites, the Belkin Gallery events found on one site, and no single listing of everything on any one site for the Beautiful Brain. Please let me know if you find something I’ve missed.

Charles Darwin attends Vancouver’s (Canada) Feb. 12, 2013 Café Scientifique

Next week on Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2013, Vancouver’s Café Scientifique community will celebrate Charles Darwin’s birthday. From their Feb. 5, 2013 announcement,

Our next café will be a special event to celebrate Charles Darwin’s birthday, Darwin Day, on Tuesday, February 12th, 7:30pm at Science World. (Note: There is no charge to enter Science World for this event, but admittance is to the Science Theatre area, not all of Science World.) Our speaker for the evening will be Dr. Greg Bole from UBC’s Department of Zoology.

He will be appearing in costume and in character, portraying a young Charles Darwin, as he has been for several years to classes and conferences in a wide variety of locations. His talk is titled, “Charles Darwin: Citizen Scientist”, and it will deal with the life and times of the man who developed the theory of evolution by natural selection.

Following Greg Bole’s talk and the Q&A period, Ian Bushfield of the BC Humanist Association will show us the certificate he received from Mayor Gregor Robertson proclaiming February 12, 2013 as International Darwin Day in the city of Vancouver. Finally, we will be screening the 2009 biographical film, “Creation”, starring real-life couple Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly as Charles and Emma Darwin.

We’re not able to provide beer for sale at this event, but you are welcome to bring your own alcoholic or non-alcoholic beverages, as well as your own food/snacks. We’ll have some ice available to cool your drinks.

I have seen Dr. Greg Bole perform as Charles Darwin at the Railway Club. ‘Darwin’ was a guest at an evolution rap performance as per my Feb. 21, 2011 posting titled, Performance, feedback, revision: Baba Brinkman’s Feb.20.11 performance.

Notice the reference to alcoholic beverages (beer) and snacks. It’s necessary since this Café Scientifique group usually meets at the Railway Club where they can order beer and food. Science World, aka Telus World of Science, is located at 1455 Quebec Street.

Inside story on doping; build it and they will collide; and physicist, feminist, and philosopher superstar Evelyn Fox Keller visits

Here are a few events being held in Vancouver (Canada) over the next weeks and months. This is not an exhaustive list (three events) but it certainly offers a wide range of topics.

Inside story on doping

First, Café Scientifique will be holding a meeting on the subject of doping and athletic pursuits at The Railway Club on the 2nd floor of 579 Dunsmuir St. (at Seymour St.) next Tuesday,

Our next café will happen on Tuesday January 29th, 7:30pm at The Railway Club. Our speaker for the evening will be Dr. Jim Rupert.[School of Kinesiology, University of British Columbia]

The title and abstract for his café is:

The use of genetics in doping and in doping control

Sports performance is an outcome of the complex interactions between an athlete’s genes and the environment(s) in which he or she develops and competes.  As more is learned about the contribution of genetics to athletic ability, concerns have been raised that unscrupulous athletes will attempt manipulate their DNA in an attempt to get an ‘edge‘ over the competition. The World Anti-doping Agency (WADA) has invested research funds to evaluate this possibility and to support studies into methods to detect so-called “gene doping”.  Superimposed on these concerns is the realisation that, in addition to contributing to performance, an athlete’s genes may influence the results of current doping-control tests. Natural genetic variation is an issue that anti-doping authorities must address as more is learned about the interaction between genotype and the responses to prohibited practices. To help differentiate between naturally occurring deviations in blood and urine ‘markers’ and those potentially caused by doping, the ‘biological-passport’ program uses intra-individual variability rather than population values to establish an athlete’s parameters.  The next step in ‘personalised’ doping-control may be the inclusion of genetic data; however, while this may benefit ‘clean’ athletes, it will do so at the expense of risks to privacy.  In my talk, I will describe some examples of the intersection of genetics and doping-control, and discuss how genetic technology might be used to both enhance physical performance as well as to detect athletes attempting to do so.

This is a timely topic  given hugely lauded Lance Armstrong’s recent confession that he was doping when he won his multiple cycling awards. From the Lance Armstrong essay on Wikipedia (Note: Footnotes and links have been removed),

Lance Edward Armstrong (born Lance Edward Gunderson, September 18, 1971) is an American former professional road racing cyclist. Armstrong was awarded victory in the Tour de France a record seven consecutive times between 1999 and 2005, but in 2012 he was disqualified from all his results since August 1998 for using and distributing performance-enhancing drugs, and he was banned from professional cycling for life. Armstrong did not appeal the decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Armstrong confessed to doping in a television interview in January 2013, two-and-a-half months after the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), the sport’s governing body, announced its decision to accept USADA’s findings regarding him, and after he had consistently denied it throughout his career.

Build it and they will collide

Next, both TRIUMF (Canada’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics) and ARPICO (Society of Italian Researchers and Professionals in Western Canada) have sent Jan. 23, 2013 news releases concerning Dr. Lyn Evans and his talk about building the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN (European Particle Physics Laboratory) which led to the discovery of the Higgs Boson. The talk will be held at 6:30 pm on Feb. 20, 2013 at Telus World of Science, 1455 Quebec Street, Vancouver,

Fundamental Physics Prize winner to deliver public lecture Wed. Feb. 20 at Science World

Back to the Big Bang – From the LHC to the Higgs, and Beyond
Unveiling the Universe Lecture Series
Wednesday, 20 February 2013 at 6:30 PM (PST)
Vancouver, British Columbia

(Vancouver, B.C.)  The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is history’s most powerful atom smasher, capable of recreating the conditions that existed less than a billionth of a second after the Big Bang. The construction of the LHC was a massive engineering challenge that spanned almost 15 years, yielding the most technologically sophisticated instrument mankind ever has created.

Join Science World and TRIUMF in welcoming Dr. Lyn Evans, project leader for the LHC construction, in his Milner Foundation Special Fundamental Physics Prize lecture. In this free event, Dr Evans will detail some of the design features and technical challenges that make the LHC such an awe-inspiring scientific instrument. He will also discuss recent results from the LHC and touch on what’s next in the world of high-energy physics. The lecture will be followed by an audience question and answer session.

Dr Evans, born in Wales in 1945, has spent his whole career in the field of high energy physics and particle accelerators. In 2012, he was awarded the Special Fundamental Physics Prize for his contribution to the discovery of the Higgs-like boson. See http://www.fundamentalphysicsprize.org

Tickets are free, but registration is required.

See  http://fpplecture.eventbrite.ca

Physicist, feminist, philosopher superstar Evelyn Fox Keller

Here’s the information available from the Situating Science Cluster Winter 2013 newsletter,

The UBC [University of British Columbia] Node and partners are pleased to welcome Dr. Evelyn Fox Keller as Cluster Visiting Scholar Th. April 4th. The Node and partners continue to support the UBC STS [University of British Columbia Science and Technology Studies] colloquium.

There is more information Fox Keller and the first talk she gave to kick off this Canadawide tour in an Oct. 29, 2012 posting. She will be visiting the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary (Alberta) just prior to the April 4, 2013 visit to Vancouver. There are no further details about Fox Keller’s upcoming visit either on the Situating Science website or on the UBC website.