News Category: News
SCWIST featured in new Volunteer Vancouver publication
Volunteers Director Linda Lanyon and volunteers Cornelia Hoehr and Kerry Ross are featured in Volunteer Vancouver’s A People Lens: 101 Ways to Move Your Organization Forward!. Purchase your copy here.
Expanding the Bounds of Intellectual Property
Intellectual Property (IP), especially
in the form of patents, is too often seen as an obstacle to open science and a culture of sharing, or alternatively as the only means through which investment in
genomics research can result in application.
In the Intellectual Property and Policy Research Group (IPPRG), part of UBC’s W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics (CAE), we take a much more nuanced view: that IP is a tool that can be used in various forms to advance different objectives. As social scientists,
our work is pushing the bounds of understanding how alternative IP, such as open source, patent pools, and public domain, can be applied in genomics.
As part of its efforts to foster GE³LS research, Genome BC has been instrumental in supporting the IPPRG and facilitating connections with genomics researchers interested in IP’s potential role.
In our work with the large-scale “Building a GE³LS Architecture” project, we’re analyzing the BC Cancer Agency’s (BCCA) attempted patent pool for its SARS virus sequence. One of the first attempts ever in the genomics arena, this
proposed patent pool could help preserve a zone of open scientific research and will likely pave the way for future attempts to form these unique IP
arrangements. Such patent pools could make basic genomics research – and resulting health care products – more available and less costly.
We’re also working closely with the “Dissecting Gene Expression Networks in Mammalian Organogenesis” (MORGEN) team at the BCCA to understand an appropriate role for IP in the development of new research tools and in upstream genomics research. One aim is to see how open-source licensing
approaches – originally developed for IT to ensure that basic development tools were licensed to promote cost-free information sharing – can be adapted to the life sciences.
Our work with Don Moerman’s C. Elegans research group, which is committed to making research publicly available, asks questions about the impact on research productivity of using the public domain, versus IP protection.
Through this Genome BC-funded research we were recently invited to participate in a new project of the Sauder School of Business’ Centre
for Social Innovation and Sustainability, which explores how alternative IP could advance the development of medicines for neglected diseases.
I am fortunate to be collaborating with a team of individuals with diverse, but essential, expertise. Our exciting and important work continues to expand into new areas, and I believe it has the potential to advance IPPRG’s impact onto the world stage.
With degrees in biology, history of science and law from Harvard, Cambridge and New York Universities, Emily Marden is a faculty member at UBC’s W. Maurice Centre for Applied Ethics (CAE) and a practicing attorney in the biotech/pharmaceutical arena. She co-leads the CAE’s Intellectual Property and Policy Research Group (IPPRG) along with Dr. Ed Levy.
Genome BC’s Spring 2009 Newsletter Signals
At the science fair, girls dominate the class
By Hayley Mick
Globe and Mail – May 15, 2009
To qualify for this week’s Canada-Wide Science Fair in Winnipeg, Larissa Christie logged hundreds of hours investigating North America’s vanishing bee population.
Why Canada’s young male scientists also seem to be disappearing, she says, is easier to explain.
“So many girls are just determined,” said Larissa, 15, speaking from the University of Manitoba, where 500 of Canada’s best young scientists are competing for almost $1-million in scholarships and grants that will be handed out today.
As female students increasingly dominate in science competitions across the country, educators are facing a conundrum that requires more social analysis than hard science: Boys are not just getting beaten by girls — they’re not even showing up.
Five years ago, boys made up 55 per cent of the competitors at the annual Canada-Wide Science Fair, a national competition where youth in grades 7 to 12 compete against other regional representatives. After a steady decline, this year boys are in the minority at 44 per cent.
Girls are also claiming the lion’s share of prize money available each year: Eight of the last nine overall winners have been female.
“We’re beginning to have concerns,” said Reni Barlow, executive director of Youth Science Canada, a national organization that oversees the national and regional science fairs in its mandate to foster Canada’s future generation of scientists.
Educators are searching for new tools to lure more boys back into the fold. In Quebec, where girls made up 68 per cent of students at this year’s provincial science fair, regional organizers recently created a program focused on technology and robotics — deliberately promoting fields where boys have traditionally shown the most interest. Youth Science Canada recently launched a mentorship program that it hopes will inspire more boys to continue in the footsteps of Canada’s top male researchers.
Ironically, many of the programs mirror those that have been used in the last 15 years to draw more young girls into the fold, when the alarm was raised about the lack of women in science university programs across the country.
Carole Charlebois, executive director of Quebec’s provincial branch of YSC, says she suspects the pendulum has swung too far in the girls’ direction and boys are being left out and left behind. “We’re seeing a real decrease in interest and good marks from the boys.”
Others say some boys simply lack motivation.
“If I were to say [why] — I know this might sound a bit sexist — but most of the time, the girls are more persistent in the work,” said Ronan Lefol, a Grade 12 student from Saskatoon, who started competing in science fairs in Grade 1 and has gone on to win thousands of dollars in scholarship money.
Megan Hawse, 13, said many of her male peers in Mount Pearl, Nfld., would rather play sports than spend the hours she logged on evenings and weekends for her experiment on whether algae could be a sufficient source of Omega 3 for humans.
She has noticed some other factors. When she reaches Grade 11, she plans to apply for a provincial internship program that promotes women in science and engineering — but there isn’t a similar program for her male classmates. And one reason no boys competed in a biotechnology fair in her area, she added, may be that girls tend to be more interested in subjects like biology, health and environmental sciences, whereas boys tend to be drawn more to physical sciences and engineering.
Ms. Christie, part of an all-female, six member team of representatives from Bluewater County in Ontario, thinks the trend may also reflect how she’s been educated. “I don’t know if it’s just my generation, or maybe we’ve just been raised with the idea that we can do whatever we put our minds to.”
The trend in science fairs seems to reflect what’s already being seen throughout the education system. While women continue to be underrepresented at the graduate level in physical sciences and engineering, they are in the majority of at most university undergraduate programs and medical schools. Many high school teachers report that girls are running circles around the boys in class in most subjects.
Gino Ferri, who has taught in Ontario high schools for 40 years, began noticing that girls were catching up to boys academically when he began teaching high school in north Toronto in the 1980s. By the 1990s, he noticed things were evenly split in terms of girls and boys’ performance in science and math.
But in the last five years, he has noticed that the girls at St. Mary’s High School where he teaches have been taking over. Who accounts for the most science students? The girls. Outdoor education leaders? Girls again. “We’re teaching the women not to take a back seat to anybody. So they’re simply shining.”
Still, Dr. Ferri says boys are coming out of their shells in more traditionally female dominated subjects, like English and public speaking. He doesn’t share others’ concerns that boys are falling behind. “Eventually it will balance out,” he said. “We’ll get to the point where everything stabilizes.”
Oliver Jourmel, 14, suspects his peers in the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island simply don’t know what they’re missing. More students — girls or boys — would design science projects if they knew about all the socializing, field trips and travel that comes with competing.
“My friends laugh when I say I’m off to the science fair … ‘You’re off to nerd fair’ or whatever,” he said. “When I come back and say I went to the aviation museum and I won $1,000 … then it becomes, ‘Oh wow, that’s kind of cool.’”
WHIZ KIDS
Baking-soda volcanoes? Please. Canada’s top young scientists tackle everything from genetics to antibiotic resistance and astrophysics. Here’s a sampling of grand-prize winning projects from the Canada-Wide Science Fair:
• 2008: Daniel Burd, a Grade 11 student from Waterloo, Ont., discovers soil microbes that can decompose plastic bags within months.
• 2007: Emily Cooley, 18, of Calgary studies the role that stem cells play in re-occurring cancer in adults.
• 2006: Kayla Cornale, 16, of Burlington, Ont., links musical harmonies with basic human emotions to create an educational system for autistic children.
• 2005: Natalie Raso, a Grade 10 student from Hamilton, investigates ways to harness the power of genetically modified viruses in cancer treatment while protecting healthy cells.
It’s good to be a daydream believer
Zoning out can help fire up other parts of your brain, UBC researcher says
By David Karp, Vancouver Sun – May 12, 2009
The next time your boss catches you zoning out, tell him or her you’re just trying to work your brain harder.
Activity in numerous regions of the brain increases when our minds wander, a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found.
“There’s a bad reputation that mind-wandering gets in society. People are made to believe it’s a wasteful mental activity to engage in,” said University of B.C. psychology professor Kalina Christoff, the study’s lead author.
Researchers at UBC gave 15 young adults a button-pushing task. During the task, an fMRI machine repeatedly scanned their brains to determine what parts were being used. At the same time, a researcher asked participants whether they were focused on the button-pushing task.
By examining brain scans taken when participants were not focused, researchers observed what parts of the brain are active during daydreaming.
Christoff’s team found that the parts of the brain associated with complex problem solving – called the executive network – were activated when subjects’ minds wandered.
The parts of the brain used in normal daily tasks—called the default network—turn off during complex problem solving. But when the mind wanders, both networks stay on.
“We’ve been trying to find if there are any other circumstances where they both become activated, and we’ve only found two other circumstances,” Christoff said. Those circumstances are just before someone arrives at an insight from creative thinking, and watching a film.
So what exactly do people think about when they daydream?
“The vast majority of mind- wandering is oriented toward what scientists call ‘current concerns’—things that are unresolved in your
life currently,” Christoff explained. “When your mind wanders, you might actually be thinking about topics that are of much greater personal importance than what you have to do right now.”
And while topics of personal importance might not be what the boss finds important, Christoff said there may be a benefit to daydreaming.
“Let’s say you’re hard at work at some problem. It might be useful to let your mind wander for a little bit, and then go back to that problem,” she said. “That way, you might be able to use additional resources for the problem.”
But before you make a conscious decision to stop focussing on the task at hand and let your mind wander, there’s a caveat.
“Those two networks become even more active when you don’t realize your mind is wandering. That’s an unexpected finding,” Christoff said. “Mind-wandering without awareness is the most potent kind of mind -wandering.”
N.W.T. fossils believed to be oldest evidence of animals
Traces of primitive organism found on mountaintop in Mackenzie range are thought to be about 850 million years old
By Randy Boswell, Vancouver Sun – May 6, 2009
Canadian scientists probing a mountaintop in the Northwest Territories have discovered what they believe is the oldest evidence of animals on Earth—about 850-million-year-old traces of a primitive, sponge-like organism that could push back direct proof of the origin of humanity’s own kingdom of life by an astonishing 200 million years.
The microscopic but distinctively patterned remains—unearthed from a dramatic pinnacle in the Mackenzie Mountains about 800 kilometres northwest of Yellowknife—are interpreted by the research team as rock-encased residues from the decomposed tissues of a primordial sea creature that was the earliest common ancestor of all animals, including humans. The organism, believed to have lived in the nooks of a reef from a long-lost ocean, represents a stage of life “before sponges and other animals we know today evolved,” University of Laval geologist Fritz Neuweiler, told Canwest News Service.
Experts in evolution have long postulated that animals must have been developing eons before the existence of known creatures that left easy-to-see skeletal fossils during the Cambrian and Ediacaran geological eras, reaching back about 635 million years ago.
“If you want to go back to the very origins of animals, you can’t be looking for that,” says Laurentian University paleontologist Elizabeth Turner, one of the three co-authors of a paper detailing the Canadian discovery in the latest issue of the journal Geology.
Grants aim to help women
Childcare grants help scientists attend conferences
This year, Kristen Williams was able to attend all five days of the annual meeting of the American Physical Society (APS). And she participated in an important tutorial a day earlier — all without fretting about her four-year-old daughter.
Williams, a second-year graduate student in computational materials science at Texas A&M University in College Station, was a beneficiary of Elsevier Foundation’s New Scholars grant programme, which is now in its second year. (The foundation, which supports libraries as well as early-career scholars, is an offshoot of Elsevier publishing.) The funds, which she received as an APS grant, allowed her to send her daughter to stay with family in Alabama while Williams spent six days in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
“If it weren’t for the grant, I would have skipped the tutorial and gone to the meeting for only a couple days,” says Williams. “My daughter would have stayed at home with her father, and I would have been thinking, ‘Was it OK, was my husband able to pick her up from school today?’ With the grant, I was focused at the meeting and not worrying about her.”
The APS’s Committee on the Status of Women in Physics is one of five organizations globally that collectively received about $200,000 recently in grant funds from the foundation. The grants are designed to help finance new programmes that will support women in science. The APS is, in turn, granting its share of those funds — which it is matching — to individual applicants for child-care costs associated with society conferences. Committee chair Mary Hall-Reno says that the APS has tried other family and child-care programmes for its annual meetings but none has been as effective as this. “It’s very flexible,” she says. “The child doesn’t even have to be at the meeting site.”
The other recipients of the New Scholars grants are the Association for Women in Science, which is developing a coaching and support programme for early- to mid-career women; the Maternal and Childcare Union of Tbilisi, Georgia, which is helping women scientists build networking and other career skills; and the European Molecular Biology Organization, the University of the Pacific and the Museum of New Zealand, all of which received child-care funds for their annual conferences.
David Ruth, foundation executive director, says the grants’ focus on childcare, family issues and career advancement grew out of discussions with organizations and agencies internationally, all of which identified early- to mid-career women scientists as most likely to leave the field. They found that concerns about work-life balance were a central reason for the exodus. Ruth says the foundation is trying to spur the development of new programmes to address these conflicts, in hopes of reducing the dropout rate.
UWO’s Amanda Moehring is new Canada Research Chair
University of Western Ontario researcher Amanda Moehring has received a $500,000 appointment as Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Functional Genomics.
One of the great unanswered questions in biology is how such a wide variety of creatures came to be living on our planet – that is, the genetic changes that cause one population to diverge into two distinct species and prevents them from merging back together.
The work of Moehring focuses on the genetic changes that cause new species to form and be maintained. Her work examines both the genetics of behavioural isolation (why species are not attracted to other species) as well as hybrid sterility, which occurs from interspecies matings.
Moehring also received $163,330 in infrastructure funding from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation for a Molecular and Behavioural Genetics Laboratory.
Spring 2009 Western Alumni Gazette p. 9
SCWIST celebrates National Volunteers Week
SCWIST celebrated National Volunteers Week thanking its volunteers on YouTube and launching a “shape your own program” project. Over 100 SCWIST volunteers invest their time in making science fun for girls, hosting workshops for women in science and engineering, and creating events for scientific women who have immigrated to Canada.
During National Volunteers Week (19th-25th April 2009), SCWIST surveyed over 100 volunteers to learn their vision for the volunteer program. SCWIST Volunteers Director, Dr. Linda Lanyon, says “During 2009 SCWIST is committed to designing a meaningful Volunteer Program that recognises, empowers and supports its community of highly talented volunteers. We wanted to ensure our volunteers have a strong voice in the development of this Program.”
SCWIST’s National Volunteers Week celebrations concluded with the posting of a video message of thanks to its volunteers, including features about some of its current volunteers. SCWIST President, Dr. Elana Brief, says “Our volunteer resource is truly vital to the success of SCWIST in achieving its current and future aims. All the work we do in promoting math, science and technology as possible career paths to girls, and in supporting and empowering women in science and technology is due to the commitment of our wonderful volunteers. During National Volunteers Week we send them our special thanks”.
Arctic fossil is “missing link” to seals
By Randy Boswell, Vancouver Sun – April 23, 2009
A Canadian-led team of scientists working on a remote Arctic island has discovered the fossilized remains of an extinct forerunner of the modern seal—a stunning new species hailed as the “missing link” in land-to-sea evolution predicted by Charles Darwin.
The 20-million-year-old creature, unearthed on Nunavut’s Devon Island, was about one metre in length and possessed otter-like limbs and tail but the skull and jaw structure of a pinniped—the diverse family of marine mammals that includes members such as seals, sea lions and walruses.
Unveiled in the latest issue of Nature, the ancient animal is described as a semi-aquatic meat-eater with webbed feet adapted for speedy swimming, but also possessing nimble legs for hunting on land.
The discovery team—which is headed by Canadian Museum of Nature paleontologist Natalia Rybczynski and has also included the renowned, 77-year-old American scientist Mary Dawson—has labelled the find Puijila darwini: an Inuktitut word meaning “young sea mammal” followed by a Latinate tribute to Darwin.
The great British naturalist has been the focus of international celebrations this year to mark the 200th anniversary of his birth and the 150th anniversary of his landmark treatise on evolution, On the Origin of Species.
Darwin foretold the discovery of a transitional carnivore such as Puijila that would bridge the gap between land mammals with feet and marine mammals with flippers.
“A strictly terrestrial animal,” he wrote in the 1860s, “by occasionally hunting for food in shallow water, then in streams or lakes, might at last be converted into an animal so thoroughly aquatic as to brave the open ocean.”
Darwin observed: “We may believe that the progenitor of the seal did not possess a flipper, but a foot with five toes fitted for walking or grasping.”
Rybczynski said it appears Puijila lived in a freshwater habitat—fresh evidence to challenge the prevailing theory that pinnipeds moved directly from land to ocean to exploit saltwater prey.
SCWIST member Mya Warren receives UBC Faculty Science Achievment award
Congratulations to Mya Warren – a recipient of this year’s Faculty Science Achievement Awards at the University of British Columbia.
Mya led the team that developed the Teaching Assistant Training program in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, which has become a model for such activities across the faculty of Science.
SCWIST nominates Judy Illes for 2009 YWCA Women of Distinction Award
SCWIST has a proud tradition of nominating excellent women in science, engineering and technology for the YWCA Women of Distinction awards. We also are delighted to have several previous awardees and nominees among our members (including the 2008 winner Dr. Rabab Ward).
This year Elana Brief, Kim Hellemans and Gulnur Birol and Julia Vaughan wrote and assembled the nomination package for Dr. Judy Illes. Below is an excerpt from the nomination.
Dr. Judy Illes, Canada Research Chair in Neuroethics and Professor of Neurology, is the Director of the National Core for Neuroethics, based at the University of British Columbia and leads the Women in World Neuroscience Committee of the International Brain Research Organization (IBRO). In less than a decade, Judy pioneered the field of neuroethics to provide ethical and legal guidelines for advances in neuroscience so that patients, doctors, researchers and policy-makers are able to make ethical decisions. Judy volunteers her time nationally and internationally to advance women in science, and is working towards reducing barriers that exist for women neuroscientists in low- to mid-income nations. Judy is admired by her students and colleagues and is an inspiring role-model for both women and men.
We are delighted to see the impressive list of nominees that have been put forward by the many dedicated women and men who work to promote and advance women in science.
The full list of nominees for the 2009 YWCA Women of Distinction Award in Technology, Science and Industry is:
Elizabeth Croft – Professor of Mechanical Engineering, UBC
Charmaine Dean – Professor of Statistics and Actuarial Science, SFU
Adele Diamond – Professor of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, UBC, and Canada Research Chair
Judy Illes – Director, National Core for Neuroethics and Professor of Neurology, UBC
Shelia Innis – Director, Nutrition Research Program, Child & Family Research Institute
Margo Moore – Professor of Biological Sciences, SFU
If you wish to attend the awards dinner (June 3, 2009), please let .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) know. We may be able to assemble a SCWIST table. For more information on the awards or the dinner, go to http://www.ywcavan.org/content/Women_of_Distinction_Awards/201/30/114.
Your Brain and Protein Power
As nerve cells develop, they grow connections and become integrated into neural networks that transmit electrochemical signals through the nervous system. Once these networks are established, a neuron’s capacity for growth and formation of new connections is diminished. This loss of neural plasticity is why an ageing or damaged brain is unable to repair itself by forming new connections.
But UBC researchers have discovered that neurons don’t lose their capacity for growth; rather, they are prevented from doing so. Researchers have pinpointed the agents involved in neural growth and suppression: the proteins calpain and cortactin. Cortactin activates neural growth, and calpain blocks cortactin once the neuron has developed and integrated into the nervous system.
The researchers were able to demonstrate in animal models that suppression of calpain results in greater neural plasticity. They are hopeful their discovery will lead to new treatments for neurological disorders and boost in the efficacy of treatments for other conditions.
Ana Mingorance-Le Meur, a postdoc in the department of Cellular and Physiological Sciences, is study lead along with professor Timothy O’Connor. “The maintenance of neuronal connections is an active process that requires constant repression of the formation of nerve sprouts by the protein calpain to avoid uncontrolled growth,” she says. “But a consequence of this role is that calpain limits
neural plasticity and the brain’s ability to repair itself. The next step is to find a way to enhance neural plasticity without interfering with the good connections that are already in place.” Mingorance-Le Meur is also a member of the Brain Research Centre at UBC and VCH Research Institute.
UBC Alumni’s Trek magazine Issue 23, Spring 2009 p 7
Wed Feb 01
