Archive for Phillip Jeffrey

UBC hosts panel of young leaders at its second annual TEDxTerry Talks

Iris Amuto, Eric Ma, Jennifer Kaban, Tahira Ebrahim, Azim Wazeer: TEDxTerry Talks speakers

On Oct 3, UBC hosted more than 250 students and alumni to the second annual TEDxTerry Talks 2009, a UBC student conference that provides a platform for its young leaders to share innovative ideas and discuss personal projects they are passionate about. This year, the speakers were seven undergraduate students, one graduate student and a young alumnus.

TEDx, where the x = independently organized TED event, is a program initiated by the group widely known for their Ideas Worth Spreading Series of annual conferences and inspirational videos of invited speakers. TEDx is designed to provide an opportunity for anyone to self-organise and host an event that will bring people together to share in a TED-like experience.

TEDxTerry Talks (tag: TEDxTt) emerged out of the Terry Project, a collaborative initiative between the UBC Faculties of Arts and Science. Its key purpose is to educate primary undergraduate students about current global issues such as malaria, H1N1, and poverty through organising events and fostering conversations using social media such as Twitter, Facebook and their blogs.

Jennifer Gardy, alumnus speaker: “Public Health in the 21st Century: the Open-Source Outbreak”

Dr. Jennifer Gardy, an alumnus speaker at the event, is co-leading the new genome research lab at the BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC). She is also known as “Nerd Girl” from her Globe and Mail blog of the same name. In her talk, Gardy shared how advances in technology have provided increased collaboration on scientific research and scholarly publications — what she labelled as public health 2.0.

For example, she showed how one publication had 36 authors. After leading the audience through the origins of H1N1, she stated how it only took five days from the sequencing of the virus to the first open-source paper. Gardy ended her talk emphasizing how students should be willing to explore the benefits of Open Access publications, collaborative research, and emerging technologies.

Via email, Maclean’s OnCampus asked Gardy, along with other speakers, about her pet project:

Q: What is the value of open-access (OA) publications? Are these types of publications being supported by scientists?

Gardy: OA publications have value because they remove access barriers to knowledge. To access anything more than an abstract of a scientific paper in the pre-OA days, someone who was interested in the paper either had to a) be affiliated with an institution that had a subscription to that journal (and then be able to access that subscription either online or by traveling to the library to see the print copy) or b) willing to pay the per-article charge, generally $30-$50, to be able to download or access that article.

This excluded all sorts of groups from being able to access information: researchers whose institutes don’t have enough money to pay for a subscription (e.g pretty much all of the developing world) and people who are interested in a topic but don’t have an institutional affiliation (e.g. a patient trying to do research into a rare disorder they have) are two of the most obvious groups, but there are others you wouldn’t think of it….OA removes all these headaches and barriers and lets anybody see a paper, taking knowledge out of the domain of just the ivory tower and giving back to the people.

Q:What was the role of open-access publications in the discovery of H1N1?

Gardy: As far as H1N1 goes, virtually all of the big, early papers on the virus were published in non-OA journals but the authors chose to pay the extra costs and make the articles freely available. Many other important papers were published in weekly online OA journals like Eurosurveillance and MMWR. Thus ANYBODY could access the most up-to-date knowledge and contribute to the investigation into the virus.

Also, the outbreak catalyzed the creation of PLoS Currents, an online OA “pre-journal” where authors can submit works in progress that are vetted a by a small team of experts but nor formally peer-reviewed, and which can then be published later once they are more developed. The first PLoS Currents site (there will be one site each for a range of topics) is on influenza research, and launched a few months back at www.ploscurrents.org/influenza. It’s a neat new model for scientific publishing.

Experience the synergy between art and nature

Art In The Garden took place at the UBC Botanical Garden from August 8 to 9. Since 1999, this annual event has been organised by Janet Lee within the private garden of her home. This year she collaborated with Friends of the Garden, which enabled the event to be relocated and expanded to include twenty diverse BC artists with garden-themed artwork.

Video features Janet Lee and Gudrun Hancock

Janet Lee, Janet Planet Designs and Gudrun Hancock, Friends of the Garden share why Art In The Garden is now at the UBC Botanical Garden, the reasons for the change, and the benefits of the new location.

Video features Raymond Chow, Yolande Morin, and Douglas Walker
Raymond Chow explains why the UBC Endowment Lands inspired him to spend a month at the UBC Botanical Garden to create a series of paintings. In describing his painting of the garden tunnel, he recommends that musicians play their music at its entrance because of the incredible acoustics.

Raymond Chow views the UBC Botanical Garden tunnel as a sound chamber for musicians

Yolande Morin recalls her artistic beginnings in photography as a nine years old. She used a little box camera she received as a gift to take pictures of her friends and family. She states: “[I was] trying to imitate the cherry blossoms by Van Gogh on the blue sky…by photographing in black and white the tree that was in front of our house”

Douglas Walker describes the functionality of an artpiece he calls French Horn Union Number 7. It pumps water through two French Horn sculptures in an S-shape causing water to pour out of the fountains while continuously rotating a water wheel.

Douglas Walker with his French Horn Union Number 7

Gurdin Hancock, Friends of the Garden discovers an Alcea Rosea

Additional pictures are available in the Flickr set.

UBC community gets a taste of the flavour of summer

From July 28th to 30th, the first annual UBC Blueberry Fest took place at the University of British Columbia. Summer visitors and members of the local community were offered a variety of menu choices such as fresh blueberries, blueberry pancakes, and baked goods.

According to Will Van Baalen of the B.C. Blueberry Council, the B.C. blueberry industry produces close to 90 million pounds from its 650-person grower base. It also has 18,000 acres of highbush blueberries in B.C.’s lower mainland.

Featuring: Will Van Baalen, BC Blueberries Council; Amy Frye, UBC Farm;
Simran Bains, Westberry Farms; Jose Aliangan, UBC Food Services

Meenakshi Mannoe and Kate Parnell, 4th year UBC students eating blueberry cream blintzes

Julia Ostertag of UBC Farm selling their local produce

Satwinder Bains and Simran Bains of Westberry Farms display their fresh blueberries

Jose Aliangan of UBC Food Services makes blueberry pancakes

See the flickr set for additional photos.

Emperor Akihito last visited the university in 1953, when he was crown prince

Yesterday Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko of Japan visited the University of British Columbia. It was the first visit of Emperor Akihito to UBC since 1953, when he visited the campus as crown prince. UBC is the last leg of their 11-day tour of Canada, which marked the 80th anniversary of Japan-Canada diplomatic relations. I attended the tour by the Imperial couple to the UBC Nitobe Memorial Garden, during which they spoke with 20 students.

The Emperor and Empress of Japan during their tour of the UBC Nitobe Memorial Garden

Emperor Akihito greets UBC student Jessica Mark. Photo credit: Goh Iromoto

Of the 20 students who met the Imperial couple, three were made available to the media.

UBC students Jen Loong, Ciaran Dudley, and Drew Wallin

I asked Ciaran and Drew about their experience meeting the Emperor and Empress.

Rachel Mackenzie, a friend of the garden who had previously guided members of the Japanese royal family through the Nitobe Memorial Garden was interviewed about its history and landscape.

It was a pleasure to have their majesties visit UBC and take time to interact with students. I wish them safe travels as they conclude their Canadian visit today.

Further photos of their visit are available here.