Tag Archives: Café Scientifique Vancouver

*Four Vancouver (Canada) science events: Policy Making and Science; Solving a global medical crisis with a particle accelerator; and Marc Garneau asks, Should Canada be in space?; light to quantum materials

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It’s going to be busy in Vancouver (Canada) next week, if you plan your life around the city’s science events.

The first event, “The Art of Policy Making: What’s Science Got to Do With It?” is being held by the Canadian Association for the Advancement of Science. It will be held at lunchtime on Tuesday, November 26, 2013 at Simon Fraser University’s Harbour Centre campus in downtown Vancouver.

The Art of Policy Making:

What’s Science Got to Do With It?

Speaker: Andrew Petter, President of Simon Fraser University

Panelists: Adam Walters-Navigate Surgical Company, Vancouver, B.C. and David S. Fushtey, Senior Fellow,, Centre for Corporate Governance and Risk Management, SFU Beedie Faculty of Business, and Fellow, SFU Centre for Dialogue

Moderator: Bill Good, CKNW Radio, Vancouver, B.C.

Co-Chairs: Martin Zuckermann, D.Phil. (Oxon), FRSC, Emeritus Professor of Physics, McGill University

Olga A. Barrat, Ph.D., Research Scientist

Date: November 26, 2013

Location:
Simon Fraser University
Harbour Centre / Segal Centre
515 West Hastings, Vancouver
Registration: 11:30 a.m.
Presentation: 12:10 p.m.
Discussion: 12:50 – 1:45 p.m.

Pre-register via email at: caas@caas-acascience.org
Or by post to CAAS at the address or fax number noted below
Tickets: $35.00 (payable at the door by cash or cheque)
Information: caas@caas-acascience.org

For that price I hope they are including lunch. I did not realize we had a Canadian Association for the Advancement of Science (established in 1999) or that it was located in North Vancouver,

CANADIAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE
P.O. Box 75513, 3034 Edgemont Blvd., North Vancouver, B.C., Canada V7R 4X1 / Fax: 604-926-5806
www.caas-acascience.org

The next day, you can trot off to: ‘Medicine Accelerated: Canada’s role in the Medical Isotope Revolution’ (part of the Unveiling the Universe Lecture Series) will be held on Wednesday, 27 November 2013 from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM (PST) at Vancouver’s Science World., From the Nov. 15, 2013 TRIUMF;Canada’s National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics news release,

Medicine Accelerated: Canada’s role in the Medical Isotope Revolution

Join Science World and TRIUMF in welcoming Dr. Paul Schaffer for a free public lecture at the TELUS World of Science Wednesday November 27, 2013.  As part of the “Unveiling the Universe” lecture series presented by TRIUMF and Science World, Dr. Schaffer will be speaking about recent advances in radiopharmaceuticals and and their role in the diagnosis, treatment, and management of diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s. he also will be highlighting Canada’s leadership role in developing cyclotron particle-accelerator technology to create medical isotopes.  This lecture is offered in cooperation with ARPICO, the Society of Italian Researchers and Professionals in Western Canada. (www.arpico.ca).

Tickets are free but registration is required.

Visit http://medicine-accelerated.eventbrite.ca  to reserve your seat.

Doors open at 6pm with the lecture starting at 7pm.   There will be a Q&A session to follow.

A live webcast of the lecture will be available online (requires Silverlight plugin). Visit registration site for link.

About Paul Schaffer

Paul Schaffer is the Division Head of the Nuclear Medicine program at TRIUMF, Canada’s national lab for particle and nuclear physics in Vancouver, BC. He is responsible for maintaining TRIUMF’s medical isotope and radiotracer production programs in support of neurological and oncological research. He was recently recognized as one of British Columbia’s Top Forty under 40 by Business in Vancouver magazine

About Science World

Science World British Columbia is a not-for-profit organization that engages British Columbians in science and inspires future science and technology leadership throughout our province.

About TRIUMF

TRIUMF is Canada’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics. It is owned and operated by a consortium of Canadian universities and is funded by a contribution through the National Research Council of Canada. The Province of British Columbia provides capital funding for the construction of buildings for the TRIUMF Laboratory.

There are some 23 General Admission tickets still available as of November 20, 2013 (9:15 am PST). This talk is likely to touch on TRIUMF’s recently ‘unveiled’ medical cyclotron (from my June 9, 2013 posting),

Today, Sunday, June 9, 2013, TRIUMF, Canada’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics, and its partners announced that they have devised a technique for producing medical isotopes that is not dependent on materials from nuclear reactors. From the June 9, 2013 TRIUMF news release,

With Canadian-developed tools and technology, a national team led by TRIUMF has reached a crucial milestone at the BC Cancer Agency in developing and deploying alternatives for supplying key medical isotopes. The team used a medical cyclotron that was designed and manufactured by Advanced Cyclotron Systems, Inc. (ACSI) of Richmond, BC, and successfully achieved large-scale production of technetium-99m (Tc-99m), sufficient for a metropolitan area.

The team announced the successful ramp-up of its technology to regularly produce enough of the critical Tc-99m isotope to supply an urban area the size of Vancouver. This achievement eliminates the need for nuclear reactors to produce isotopes, especially those that use weaponsgrade uranium, which has been the traditional approach.

ETA Nov. 25, 2013: There’s a Nov. 22, 2013 news item (Medical isotope supply interrupted across Canada; Delivery of one isotope to hospitals down to less than 50 per cent of normal) on CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) News online about the latest shortage of medical isotopes.

The third event is being hosted by Canadian Member of Parliament,(Liberal) Joyce Murray (Vancouver Quadra) on Friday, November 29, 2013 at Enigma Restaurant on W. 10th Avenue near the University of British Columbia. From the November 15, 2013, invitation,

Please join Member of Parliament Joyce Murray at her Friday November 29th MP Breakfast Connections discussion with guest speaker Marc Garneau, MP: “Does Canada need a Space Program?”

 Be part of the conversation with Canada’s first Astronaut and former President of Canada’s National Space Agency, Marc Garneau.  Canada’s Space Agency began in 1990, with a mission to lead the development and application of space knowledge for the benefit of Canadians and humanity.  Canadians have made significant contributions to space travel with the robotic Canadarm, developed in part here in British Columbia, by MacDonald Dettweiler, and we were all enthralled last year when Canadian Chris Hadfield was commander of the International Space Station and shared his experiences from space.  Is there a future for Canada’s  Space Agency?  Let’s ask Marc!

Details:

Friday, November 29, 2013

7:30 – Registration + Buffet Breakfast

7:50 – 8:45 Speaker + Q and A

Enigma Restaurant – 4397 W. 10th Ave. (Off Trimble) (map)

The cost of the breakfast is $20 / $10 for students.

(Cash only at the door)

Please RSVP to joyce.murray.c1c@parl.gc.ca or by calling 604-664-9220.

Interestingly, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfleld has been in Vancouver giving interviews (Nov. 18, 2013 on The Rush television programme), as he’s been promoting his new book, An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth. You can find out more about the book at http://chrishadfield.ca/

Btw, I have been to Joyce’s breakfasts before and they serve a good breakfast at Enigma.

*As of Nov. 20, 2013, 2:30 pm PDT: I’m adding one more event: Vancouver’s Café Scientifique is being held in the back room of the The Railway Club (2nd floor of 579 Dunsmuir St. [at Seymour St.], Vancouver, Canada), on Tuesday, November 26,  2013 at 7:30 pm. Here’s the talk description (from the Nov. 20,, 2013 announcement,

Our speaker for the evening will be Dr. Andrea Damascelli.

From Light Quanta to Quantum Materials

he photoelectric effect – the ejection of electrons from a solid consequent to the absorption of light – was discovered by Hertz in 1887 and explained by Einstein in 1905 on the basis of the revolutionary hypothesis of Light Quanta, or photons. This intuition, which gave Einstein the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921, marked the beginning of quantum physics and also of photoelectric spectroscopy, one of the most active fields in modern science and technology. Owing to recent technical progress and in particular to the development of third generation synchrotron sources – particle accelerators in which electrons traveling at nearly the speed of light generate the most brilliant light available to scientists – the last decade witnessed a renaissance in this technique and its applications. These have now become the primary tools in the study of emerging Quantum Materials, systems which manifest a wide range of astonishing electronic and magnetic phenomena and with the potential to revolutionize consumer electronics, telecommunications, next-generation computing, alternative energy, and medicine.

You can find Dr. Damascelli’s profile page here on the University of British Columbia website.

Fluid mechanics and fluid identities at Vancouver’s (Canada) Café Scientifique Oct. 29, 2013 meeting

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Vancouver’s Café Scientifique is being held in the back room of the The Railway Club (2nd floor of 579 Dunsmuir St. [at Seymour St.], Vancouver, Canada), on Tuesday, October 29,  2013 at 7:30 pm. Here’s the talk description (from the Oct. 22, 2013 announcement), Café Scientifique,

Our speaker for the evening will be Prof. Bud Homsy. The title of his talk is:

Fluid mechanics – What do the Red Spot of Jupiter and the flagellar motion of e.coli have in common?

Fluid mechanics – the study of the motion of fluids when acted upon by forces – is capable of describing fluid flows on a very wide range of length and time scales, including the Red Spot (roughly three Earth diameters in size), the Earth’s weather system, locomotion of trains, planes and automobiles, and swimming of fish, sperm, and microorganisms on the smallest scale.  It is safe to say that almost every aspect of human existence depends on fluids and their flow properties.  This talk will illustrate all the flows listed above (and more!) with movies and discussion of the mathematics and physics behind their description and understanding.

I found Bud Homsy’s faculty webpage here in the University of British Columbia’s Dept. of Mathematics where he is visiting or perhaps he has a dual appointment. There’s another faculty webpage at the University of California at Santa Barbara where he’s identified as George Homsy, a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Enviromental Engineering. I think it’s the same man; he looks the same in both pictures.

Catching cancer; story of a medical revolution at Vancouver’s (Canada) June 25, 2013 Café Scientifique

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Here’s the date and time for the next Café Scientifique Vancouver (Canada) talk, from the group’s  June 18, 2013 announcement,

Our next café will happen on Tuesday June 25th, 7:30pm at The Railway Club. Our speaker for the evening will be Claudia Cornwall, a science writer and author of 5 books and over 50 magazine articles. The details of her talk are as follows:Catching Cancer—the story of a medical revolution

We now know that 20% of cancers are caused by infections and many researchers believe that more discoveries are coming. This is a paradigm shift that was over a hundred years in the making. It has profound implications for our ability to prevent malignancies. Claudia Cornwall’s new book, Catching Cancer: the quest for its viral and bacterial cause, is the story of the story of how it happened. Who contributed to the change in thinking? [emphasis mine] How did investigators persuade the medical establishment to adopt their ideas? What personal qualities helped them in their struggle? To answer these questions, the book draws on wide-ranging interviews with Nobel prize winners and other researchers.

This looks like it’s going to be a very interesting (i.e., lively) session as it is a topic freighted with stress, fear, and mythology than cancer. I don’t think I’ve ever met another adult who didn’t have a friend or a family member who had and recovered or died from the disease. I expect this will be a very well attended talk.

For those who don’t know the location,

  The Railway Club is on the 2nd floor of 579 Dunsmuir St. (at Seymour St.), in Vancouver, Canada.

I have long been interested in how ideas become knowledge and had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Rainer Becker about his project (sadly, it was cancelled) on what seems to have bene a topic very similar to Cornwall’s book. From the first part of the Becker interview in my June 1, 2010 posting,

First, some information about the research project and Dr. Becker from the April 22, 2010 news item on Nanowerk,

How do sensational ideas become commonly accepted knowledge? How does a hypothesis turn into certainty? What are the ways and words that bring results of scientific experiments into textbooks and people’s minds, how are they “transferred” into these domains? Science philosopher Dr. Rainer Becker has recently started dealing with such questions. Over the next three years, Becker will accompany the work of Professor Dr. Frank Rösl’s department at the German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ), which studies cancer-causing viruses. [emphasis mine] He is one of three scientists in an interdisciplinary joint project which is funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) with a total sum of approximately € 790,000.

Part 2 of the interview is here in my June 2, 2010 posting.

Getting back to the Cornwall’s appearance at the Tuesday, June 25, 2013 Café Scientifique Vancouver event, I imagine she will have her book available for sale there. From Cornwall’s Catching Cancer webpage,

Catching Cancer is published by Rowman and Littlefield.  It is available in bookstores and on in line in Canada, the U.S. and many other countries.

978-1-4422-1520-7 • Hardback
April 2013 • $36.00 • (£22.95)

978-1-4422-1522-1 • eBook
March 2013 • $35.99 • (£22.95)

Pages: 240 Size: 6 x 9

Here’s more about the book, from the Catching Cancer webpage,

Catching Cancer: the quest for its viral and bacterial causes introduces readers to the investigators who created a medical revolution – a new way of looking at cancer and its causes. Featuring interviews with notable scientists such as Harald zur Hausen, Barry Marshall, Robin Warren, and others, the book tells the story of their struggles, their frustrations, and finally the breakthroughs that helped form some of the most profound changes in the way we view cancer. I take readers inside the lab to reveal the long and winding path to discoveries that have changed and continue to alter the course of medical approaches to one of the most confounding diseases mankind has known. I tell the stories of families who have benefited from this new knowledge, of the researchers who made the revolution happen, and the breakthroughs that continue to change our lives.

For years, we’ve thought cancer was the result of lifestyle choices, environmental factors, or genetic mutations. But pioneering scientists have begun to change that picture. We now know that infections cause 20 percent of cancers, including liver, stomach, and cervical cancer, which together kill almost 1.8 million people every year. While the idea that you can catch cancer may sound unsettling, it is actually good news. It means antibiotics and vaccines can be used to combat this most dreaded disease. With this understanding, we have new methods of preventing cancer, and perhaps we may be able to look forward to a day when we will no more fear cancer than we do polio or rubella.

You can find out more Cornwall and her books  on the Claudia Cornwall website.

Café Scientifique Vancouver (Canada) takes centre stage with Michael Kobor

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Moving out of the back room to the centre stage at The Railway Club (2nd floor of 579 Dunsmuir St. at Seymour St., Vancouver, Canada), the next Café Scientifique Vancouver talk will be given by Michael Kobor on Tuesday, Apr. 30, 2013 at 7:30 pm. Here’s the talk description, from the announcement,

A Dialogue in Epigenetics: How Does the Environment Get Under Our Skin?

The scientific community has known for some time that both genetics and the environment influence our health and well-being. While extensive research has focused on how our genes affect health outcomes, environmental factors have had less attention. Now a new area of research, known as epigenetics, is expanding upon our knowledge of the human genome. Epigeneticists study how our environment can have a long-term impact on the activity of our genes. Of particular concern to health researchers are the effects of socioeconomic conditions on children, and how early life stress may impact individuals and their genes down the road. Dr. Michael Kobor and his research team make use of recent advances in technology to study this interface between genetics and environment. And it is becoming clearer that what’s written in our DNA is only part of the story. Neither ‘nature,’ nor ‘nurture’ alone, is entirely one’s fate.

Kobor has his own lab (Kobor Lab) at the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics, here’s more from his bio page,

Genes can be influenced by the environment, which means our lifestyle can impact the expression of our genes. Epigenetics is the field that studies the relationship between our environment and our genes.

“Epigenetics is a very important component for studying human health,” says Dr. Kobor. “There is increasing evidence that epigenetic modifications are altered in a variety of diseases, such as cancer, and neurodegenerative disease.”

….

MAJOR ACHIEVEMENTS & PUBLICATIONS

UBC Faculty of Medicine, Distinguished Achievement Award for Excellence in Basic Science Research – 2012

Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies Early Career UBC Scholar – 2012

Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Scholar Award – 2005

Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Scholar Award – 2006

Kobor MS, Archambault J, Lester W, Holstege FC, Gileadi O, Jansma DB, Jennings EG, Kouyoumd- jian F, Davidson AR, Young RA, Greenblatt J. An unusual eukaryotic protein phosphatase required for transcription by RNA polymerase II and CTD dephosphorylation in S. cerevisiae. Molecular Cell. 1999 Jul;4(1):55–62.

Kobor MS, Venkatasubrahmanyam S, Meneghini MD, Gin JW, Jennings JL, Link AJ, Madhani HD, and Rine J. A Protein Complex Containing the Conserved Swi2/Snf2-Related ATPase Swr1p Deposits Histone Variant H2A.Z into Euchromatin. PLoS Biology. 2004 May; 2(5):E131.

Given the description for the talk is free of jargon (unless you consider “DNA” and “epigenetics” to be jargon), I would expect the talk itself to follow suit.