Around town: Operation Med School
This one’s for you if you have a high school student around the house who is thinking that med school could be a good option for post-secondary.
Vancouver
Around town: All creatures, great and small
This weekend will see a gathering of the province’s veterinarians and staff in downtown Vancouver for the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association (CVMA) and the Society of British Columbia Veterinarians (SBCV) Chapter Fall Conference and Trade Show. The program seems predominantly small animal–oriented, but in reality, vets across BC handle all sizes of patient, quadruped and biped, skin, scales, fur and feather in their daily working lives.
Have you ever wondered just how oddly varied a day’s work must be for a veterinarian?
Around town: 16th International Conference of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
This week, Vancouver is hosting the 16th International Conference of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Jointly organized by three associations—the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences and the Pan-American Association for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology—conference attendees will attend sessions over five days. These include two plenaries delivered by Nobel Prize winners, including Dr. Andrew Fire (2006; RNA gene silencing-interference by double stranded dsRNA).
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Around town: Shatner and early grammar woes
(Or why you should hire an editor.)
Local institution the University of British Columbia (UBC) is celebrating its 100th anniversary this school year. This weekend, as part of its centenary celebrations, UBC is running a daylong event: UBC100: What’s Next? A day of exploring the future, a series of talks on upcoming issues in science, community and technology. To round off the day in style, actor, musician, author and horse breeder William Shatner will share his perspective in a talk called The Curious Life, and will take questions from the audience.
My Around Town series, as I’ve explained previously, is a collection of posts highlighting great local science events. I usually pull together interesting news from conferences happening in Vancouver or explore the topics of the conferences in a more general way. With Captain Kirk himself in town, there are so many potential topics for an Around Town blog post here: NASA…Star Trek…space…technology…horse breeding?
Around town: Where’s the Patient’s Voice …?
![By English: Clinic Painter (eponymous vase)Français : Peintre de la Clinique (vase éponyme) (User:Bibi Saint-Pol, own work, 2007-07-21) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMedicine_aryballos_Louvre_CA1989-2183.jpg "Physician treating a patient. Red-figure Attic aryballos, ca. 480–470 BC. (eponymous vase) (Bibi Saint-Pol, public domain)")
Most of the conferences covered in the Around Town series are annual or occasionally biennial events, hosting professionals for continuing education to update their skills, knowledge base and networking in the subject of their passion. The Patient’s Voice conference, held November 12–14, 2015 in Vancouver, was different: this was an evaluation of progress made since the first meeting ten years ago.
Around town: Human Proteome Organization World Congress 2015
For a former protein scientist, the arrival of the HUPO World Congress in Vancouver is a Big Deal. First, one of my ongoing Talk Science to Me projects is a subcontract writing primary research reviews for a proteomics blog. Second, I am a proteins #fangirl.
Whenever I think about proteins, Tigger’s song floats around my head, for proteins are indeed wonderful things (not to mention flouncy, bouncy, trouncy, pouncy, fun fun fun fun fun…but that could just be me)[1] to study, as I remember from way back when I sat behind a bench.
Read More »Around town: Human Proteome Organization World Congress 2015Around town: The 8th IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention (IAS 2015)
Next week, Vancouver welcomes the 8th IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention to the Vancouver Convention Centre. According to the conference website, this biennial forum is expected to receive about 6,000 delegates from a wide range of HIV/AIDS disciplines around the world.
Organized by the International AIDS Society (IAS), the conference is also a partnership with the University of British Columbia (UBC) Division of AIDS, which works out of St. Paul’s, Providence Health Care’s downtown hospital.
In addition to learning through seminars and keynote presentations (find the full program here), delegates will have the opportunity to experience first-hand part of the continuum of care that Vancouver offers people with addiction and mental illness, as well as HIV. Conference attendees can sign up for an engagement tour of Insite, North America’s first legal supervised drug injection site, to learn about the city’s outreach to marginalized members of our community.Read More »Around town: The 8th IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention (IAS 2015)
Around town: 24th Annual John K. Friesen Conference—Harnessing Technology for Aging-in-Place
On Thursday, May 14, the Segal Centre at the Simon Fraser University (SFU) Vancouver Campus will host the 24th Annual John K. Friesen Conference. The purpose of this event is to explore how technology can help adults in British Columbia to age in place, helping seniors to adapt their homes so they can keep living in them as they get older.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines aging in place as “the ability to live in one’s own home and community safely, independently, and comfortably, regardless of age, income, or ability level.” The concept encourages people to stay in their own homes for as long as they wish, surrounded by everyday familiarities, without being forced into institutional care or other living conditions prematurely simply because of their age. However, for this to become feasible and a reality for the majority, society needs to change to support older adults and their needs without automatically consigning them to the health care system.Read More »Around town: 24th Annual John K. Friesen Conference—Harnessing Technology for Aging-in-Place
Around town: 6th Networking World Anesthesia Conference
The Networking World Anesthesia Convention (NWAC) takes place next week in Vancouver, BC, bringing together clinicians and researchers working in this vital medical field. It is worth remembering that without adequate anesthesia, modern medicine and surgery would be stuck in the quick and dirty field of “getting it over with fast”: read Fanny Burney’s account of a conscious mastectomy to get a feel for uncensored steel (note: not for the faint of heart).
Quite simply put, anesthesia makes a lot of modern medicine possible. From regional or local to full-immersion general anesthesia, the power of the drugs and the skill of the anesthetist smooth the way for both patient and clinician.
But how does it work—how does anesthesia take the unpleasantness away?
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