News
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UBC museum welcomes ancient sea monster
September 19, 2018
The cast skeleton of an ancient marine reptile—with a neck so long and heavy it would have barely been able raise its head above water—has taken up residence at UBC's Pacific Museum of Earth (PME). The 13-metre-long, resin-cast Elasmosaurus skeleton was installed in the glass atrium… read more
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Appetite for shark fin soup drives massive shark population decline
September 13, 2018
Consumers need to stop demanding shark fin soup and other products in the absence of robust laws and sustainable practices regulating shark overfishing, research co-authored by the Sea Around Us initiative at UBC has found. The study, conducted by researchers from the University of Hong Kong, the… read more
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Climate change fuels accumulation of pollutants in Chinook salmon, killer whales
September 11, 2018
University of British Columbia researchers studying the marine food web of the Northeast Pacific Ocean have found that the exposure and accumulation of chemical pollutants, such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and organic mercury, will be exacerbated under climate change. The study, published… read more
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UBC physicist, computer scientist among new RSC fellows
September 11, 2018
Physicist Andrea Damascelli and computer scientist Uri Ascher are among UBC’s newly named Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) – the highest honour a scholar can achieve in the sciences in Canada. Since 2000, 40 UBC Science researchers have been recognized by the RSC. … read more
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Global warming pushing alpine species higher and higher
September 10, 2018
For every one-degree-Celsius increase in temperature, mountaintop species shift upslope 100 metres, shrinking their inhabited area and resulting in dramatic population declines, new research by University of British Columbia zoologists has found. The study—the first broad review of its kind… read more
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New theory on how Earth’s subduction zones formed
August 28, 2018
New research from scientists in Canada, the Netherlands, Norway and the UK indicates that some of Earth’s most active seismic zones were formed by plate tectonic changes elsewhere on the planet. Previously, it was widely assumed that these fault zones—called subduction zones&mdash… read more
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UBC researchers unlock secrets of plant development
August 23, 2018
University of British Columbia researchers have discovered an internal messaging system that plants use to manage the growth and division of their cells. These growth-management processes are critical for all organisms, because without them, cells can proliferate out of control—as they do… read more
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Canadian laser breakthrough has physicists close to cooling down antimatter
August 22, 2018
For the first time, physicists at CERN have observed a benchmark atomic energy transition in antihydrogen, a major step toward cooling and manipulating the basic form of antimatter. “The Lyman-alpha transition is the most basic, important transition in regular hydrogen atoms, and to capture… read more
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Gut enzymes could hold key to producing universal blood
August 21, 2018
For blood transfusions to be safe, the donor and patient blood types must match. Now researchers at the University of British Columbia have identified a new, more powerful group of enzymes that can turn any type of blood into the universally usable type O—expanding the pool of potential… read more
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Super-resolution microscope reveals secrets of deadly Nipah virus
August 16, 2018
The deadly Nipah virus and others like it assemble themselves in a much more haphazard manner than previously thought, new UBC research has found. The discovery could allow scientists to develop more effective vaccines and rule out many approaches to fighting these viruses. Chemistry professor… read more