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Dear Café Scientifiquers,

“Something’s the Matter with Anti-Matter: There’s not enough of it”

 

About 13.7 billion years ago, our Universe was born in a Big Bang. That early universe was a big steaming stew of radiation and exactly equal numbers of particles and antiparticles. But somehow, a symmetry was broken, and a lopsided-ness arose, leaving a very small excess of matter over antimatter. And by the time the universe was less than a second old, essentially all the antimatter had annihilated with matter in bursts of light/energy, leaving a small residual excess of matter – which is all the matter we see in our universe; this is the matter we’re all made of.

The 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics was given to three particle physicists whose theory can explain how this lopsided universe evolved as having unequal parts matter and anti-matter, as predicted in the simplest Big Bang models.

The Standard Model of Particle Physics has been a triumph of particle physics – many thousands of experiments have confirmed predictions of this simple and elegant model. But it has at least 2 severe shortcomings: while it has been shown to accommodate matter-antimatter asymmetry, it can only do so at a level orders of magnitude too small to explain the matter-antimatter asymmetry of our universe. The other shortcoming is that it predicts a Higgs Boson, which has not yet been observed.

We’ll discuss the experimental program which has observed and studied the decays of hundreds of millions of B mesons (“beautiful mesons”), testing the Standard Model of Particle Physics to great precision. An overview of the experiment and results will be presented.

The Life Sciences Institute is having a Cafe Scientifique on February 13th (see attached poster). The title of the presentation is:

“Flights of Fancy: using Fruit Flies to Shed Light on Health and Disease”.

Hope you can attend!

Dear Café Scientifiquers,

 

Our next café will happen on Tuesday January 31st, 7:30PM at the Railway Club. The speaker for the evening will be Simon Donner, an Assistant Professor in the UBC Department of Geography who is interested in why the climate matters. His talk will be on:

 

Beyond Nemo: Coral reefs in a warming world

 

Coral reefs, often called the rainforests of the ocean, are thought to be more sensitive to climate change than any other ecosystem on the planet. Drawing on his research in the Central Equatorial Pacific nation of Kiribati, Simon Donner will talk about the effects of changes in climate and ocean chemistry on tropical corals and the potential for adaptation.

 

We hope to see you there!

 

- Café Scientifique Vancouver Organizers

Dear Café Scientifiquers,

 

Our next café will happen on Tuesday November 29th, 7:30PM at the Railway Club. The speaker for the evening will be Dr. Richard Moore, a scientist at the world-renowned Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre. His talk will be on:

 

Cancer Metagenomics: Microbes and Cancer

 

Greater than 20% of all cancers are known to be caused by microbes (viruses and bacteria) including cervical cancer, liver cancer and gastric cancer. I will describe how we are using the latest sequencing technologies to discover novel associations between microbes and cancer. I will highlight our recent discovery of Fusobactium nucleatum overabundance in colorectal cancer.

 

For a news piece on the team led by Richard and their recent discovery, check out http://www.genomebc.ca/media/news-releases/2011/bc-researchers-investigate-link-between-cancers-and-viruses/

 

We hope to see you there!

 

Sam Lee & Carolina Chanis

Café Scientifique Vancouver Organizers

Dear Café Scientifiquers,

 

Our next café will happen on Tuesday October 25th, 7:30PM at the Railway Club, and the speaker for the evening will be Jenna Capyk (PhD candidate from UBC’s Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department). Her talk will be on:

 

Tuberculosis and Cholesterol: Growth of a biochemical field

 

Tuberculosis may be an ancient disease, but it is also one that still represents a major global health concern. With about 1/3 of all people carrying the Mycobacterium tuberculosis, bacterium that causes TB, and drug resistance becoming a more serious problem every year, research into this bacterium has intensified over the past decade. Our knowledge of exactly what factors allow the bacteria to survive and cause disease, however, is very limited. A discovery made a few years ago has opened doors to a new research field on cholesterol degradation by M. tuberculosis. I’d like to talk about my biochemical research into how and why this bacterium uses cholesterol, and how this work fits into our understanding of the bacterium and the disease. I would also like to put this work in the context of research community building a new field, and use it as an example to explore the limitations and progression of biochemical research.

 

We hope to see you there!

 

- Your Café Sci Vancouver Organizers

Posted on behalf of Anadi Canepa, President of ARPICO:

Dear Cafe Scientifique Vancouver,

It is my pleasure to join the Board of Directors to announce the incorporation of the Society of Italian Researchers and Professionals in Western Canada (ARPICO).

The Society is non-profit and was founded by a group of researchers and professionals in Vancouver, British Columbia on January 17th, 2011. The aim of ARPICO is to provide a receptive atmosphere for debating new ideas, encourage and support networking, and becoming a beacon to local and visiting researchers, scholars and professionals of Italian descent or having an interest in the Italian arts and sciences. To this aim the Society adds its commitment to promote, advance, and protect the Italian culture.

We would be honored if You would join ARPICO (www.arpico.org).

I cordially invite You to the next Café Scientifique:

 “Greenest City Conservation Project: about engaging citizens in climate change issues”

 

Dr. J. Robinson, professor with UBC’s Institute for Resources, Environment & Sustainability, and the Department of Geography; executive Director of the UBC Sustainability Initiative.

 

Roundhouse Community Arts & Recreation Centre

181 Roundhouse Mews, Vancouver, BC V6Z 2W3

October 27th, 8:30 PM

See ARPICO Cafe poster attachment for more details.

Part I of the “Seeing is Believing” series

Please RSVP to nvohra@mail.ubc.ca by November 14, 2011

Dear Café Scientifiquers,

 

Our next café will happen on Tuesday September 27 at the Railway Club (579 Dunsmuir Street) at 7:30pm. Our speaker that evening will be Erika Eliason, an expert on Pacific salmon migration who has been featured on the UBC Public Affairs webpage. Her talk that evening will be:

 

Pacific Salmon and Climate Change

Every year, millions of Pacific salmon return from the ocean to the Fraser River to perform their upriver, adult spawning migration. Pacific salmon typically return to spawn in the same stream where they were born. This has resulted in many geographically and genetically distinct populations. In recent years, warm river temperatures have been associated with high mortality during the upriver spawning migration, raising clear conservation concerns. My research is focused on understanding why salmon die when the water gets too warm and how different populations vary in their susceptibility to warm temperatures.

 

We hope to see you there!

 

-Your Café Sci Vancouver Organizers (http://blogs.ubc.ca/cafesci/)

Dear Café Scientifiquers,

Our next café will happen on Tuesday Aug 30th, 7:30pm at the Railway Club (579 Dunsmuir St). We will be hosting Jacquelyn Cragg and Ward Plunet from the International Collaboration on Repair Discoveries (ICORD), and their topic will be:

 

From headlines to reality: How to be a smart consumer of scientific knowledge

 

We are bombarded with the latest discoveries from science … a cure for cancer? A cure for spinal cord injury? A cure for obesity? This talk will allow you to analyze science with a new, critical lens. We will discuss the role of the media in portraying scientific findings, the politics of research, and a few aspects of evidence based medicine. Join us for a lively discussion!

We hope to see you there!

- Your Café Sci Vancouver Organizers

 

Dear Café Scientifiquers,

 

Our next café will happen on Tuesday July 26th, 7:30pm at the Railway Club (579 Dunsmuir St). We will be hosting Agatha Jassem, from the Department of Pathology at UBC, and her talk will be:

 

Old Drugs, Bad Bugs: Antibiotic Treatment of Lung Infections in Cystic Fibrosis

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a fatal genetic disease that affects many Canadian children and young adults. Though CF is a multi-organ disease, chronic infection and inflammation of the lungs are particularly detrimental to health. Persons with CF can get infected with unusual bacteria that are hard to clear in part because they are, or become, highly resistant to antibiotics. Antibiotic treatment of airway infections in CF is further complicated by the fact that one class of antibiotics can cause resistance to another class, and some antibiotics can interfere with immune system processes. My research is focused on understanding how these “bad bugs” evade antibiotics, and the possible side-effects of chronic drug use.

 

We hope to see you there!

 

- Your Café Scientifique Organizers

 

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