News
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UBC computer scientist wins $250,000 fellowship for research on how markets make decisions
February 3, 2014
UBC computer scientist Kevin Leyton-Brown is one of six Canadian researchers awarded an EWR Steacie Memorial Fellowship today, valued at more than $250,000. The fellowship recognizes the work of young scientists at Canadian universities. Leyton-Brown’s research focuses on how financial… read more
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UBC, TRIUMF physicists earn national award for antimatter research
February 3, 2014
A Canadian team including UBC physicist Walter Hardy and TRIUMF researchers have won the NSERC John C Polanyi Award for their work in creating, capturing and characterizing the antihydrogen atom. The award "honours an individual or team whose Canadian-based research has led to a recent… read more
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How the UBC creators of AutoStitch revolutionized computer vision and sparked a spinoff tsunami
January 31, 2014
When David Lowe first wrote a computer algorithm to identify objects in images, he never envisioned it popping up on nearly half a million iPhones and in supermarket checkout lines. But since its research publication in 1999, the Scale-Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) algorithm, developed by… read more
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Climate change-related temperature swings leave insects vulnerable
January 29, 2014
Increasingly extreme swings in temperature may put some insects at higher risk than previously thought, according to a new study published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. An international team of scientists tested the impact of temperature patterns on 38 species of… read more
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Ocean acidification research should increase focus on species’ ability to adapt
January 27, 2014
Not enough current research on marine ecosystems focuses on species' long-term adaptation to ocean acidification, creating a murky picture of our oceans' future, according to an international study led by a UBC zoologist. "We can't measure evolutionary responses in all organisms, so we need to… read more
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How a versatile gut bacterium helps us get our daily dietary fibre
January 19, 2014
UBC researchers have discovered the genetic machinery that turns a common gut bacterium into the swiss army knife of the digestive tract -- helping us to metabolize a main component of dietary fibre from the cell walls of fruits and vegetables. The findings illuminate the specialized roles played… read more
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Improved maps, old school pencils, await UBC geology students this summer
January 15, 2014
This May, UBC geology students doing field studies will be able to put theory into practise -- and avoid cliffs -- using new base maps funded through Shell Canada’s Campus Ambassador Program (CAP). Every summer UBC geology students hone their field techniques at the Geological Field School… read more
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Newly discovered three-star system to challenge Einstein’s theory of General Relativity
January 5, 2014
A newly discovered system of two white dwarf stars and a superdense pulsar–all packed within a space smaller than the Earth’s orbit around the sun–is enabling astronomers to probe a range of cosmic mysteries, including the very nature of gravity itself. The international team,… read more
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Catching the big wave: 'Universal ripple' could hold the secret to high-temperature superconductivity
December 19, 2013
UBC researchers have discovered a universal electronic state that controls the behavior of high-temperature superconducting copper-oxide ceramics. The work, published this week in the journal Science, reveals the universal existence of so-called ‘charge-density-waves’ -- static… read more
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Scientific data lost at alarming rate
December 19, 2013
Eighty per cent of scientific data are lost within two decades, according to a new study that tracks the accessibility of data over time. The culprits? Old e-mail addresses and obsolete storage devices. “Publicly funded science generates an extraordinary amount of data each year,”… read more