News
July 4, 2012
Plastic pollution off the northwest coast of North America is reaching the level of the notoriously polluted North Sea, according to a new study led by a researcher at the University of British Columbia.
The study, published online in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin, examined stomach contents...
June 26, 2012
University of British Columbia students and postdoctoral fellows in the fields of geochemistry and quantum sciences have received grants totaling $3.3 million from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).
The NSERC Collaborative Research and Training Experience (...
June 20, 2012
Two UBC researchers have been awarded the 2012 Gruber Cosmology Prize for their work as part of a 2003 NASA mission that pinpointed the age of the Universe at 13.75 billion years.
UBC Physics and Astronomy professors Mark Halpern and Gary Hinshaw will share the $500,000 award with NASA Wilkinson...
June 13, 2012
Simon Peacock, recruited to UBC in 2006 from Arizona State University, has been appointed to a second six-year term as Dean of Science. His second term will run July 1, 2012 through June 30, 2018.
"Under Dean Peacock's leadership the Faculty has made outstanding achievements across undergraduate...
June 6, 2012
The loss of the planet’s biological diversity is increasingly threatening Mother Nature’s ability to provide humans with goods and services like food, water, fodder, fertile soils, and protection from pests and disease, according to a sweeping review of 20 years of research by an international team...
June 1, 2012
Anti-inflammatory agents developed by UBC microbiologist Robert Hancock, used in combination with anti-malarial drugs, have been shown to boost survival rates of severe malaria by as much as 50 per cent.
Malaria kills up to one million people worldwide every year, particularly children under five...
May 23, 2012
UBC zoologists and researchers at the Smithsonian Institution have discovered a sensory organ in rorqual whales that coordinates its signature lunge-feeding behaviour – and may help explain their enormous size.
Rorquals are a subgroup of baleen whales – including blue, fin, minke and humpback...
May 17, 2012
Three UBC outreach initiatives will get a boost from NSERC’s PromoScience Program this year, with the Michael Smith Laboratories, Life Science Institute and Pacific Museum of the Earth receiving a total of $90,000 in funding from the national competition.
The grants will enable UBC's Life Sciences...
May 10, 2012
UBC botanists have placed seaweed in the underwater equivalent of a wind tunnel to get a better idea of how different types of algae withstand the onslaught of strong waves and currents.
The findings, published in the American Journal of Botany, show that bladed and branched seaweeds take very...
May 8, 2012
UBC immunologists have found a potential way to develop universal flu vaccines and eliminate the need for seasonal flu vaccinations.
Each year, seasonal influenza causes serious illnesses in three to five million people and 200,000 to 500,000 deaths. The 2009 H1N1 pandemic killed more than 14,000...
