The University of British Columbia is a global centre for research and teaching, consistently ranked among the top 20 public universities in the world. Since 1915, UBC’s West Coast spirit has embraced innovation and questioned the status quo. With close to 63,000 students from 160 countries and more than 5,400 faculty on two campuses in Vancouver and the Okanagan, UBC is a place where bold thinking develops into ideas that can change the world. Its entrepreneurial perspective encourages students, staff and faculty to challenge convention, lead discovery and explore new ways of learning.
For human groups to grow from small, intimate communities to the huge interconnected societies we know now, people needed to be willing to cooperate with strangers. Religion might have played a big role.
Miller achieved a public voice even before she had the vote.
Vladimir Pustovit
Alice Duer Miller’s analysis of contemporary politics not only made anti-suffragist politicians look stupid. It also made her (and women like her) look completely capable of participating in the political sphere.
The microprocessors on this wafer of silicon have transistors measuring in the nanometres.
Shutterstock
As the components in electronic devices are shrinking to the nanoscale, even a single atom out of place can disrupt their function. But this also presents an opportunity to make them even better.
Whether you read to your kids or they read alone, share stories from and about Africa with them.
Shutterstock
Traditional African stories often tackle big, occasionally scary and serious themes. This is even true in children’s stories – though there’s plenty of room for silly fun, too.
People donate money during a flash football game organized by Arlington High School football player Max Gray, 18, to raise money for Jonielle Spiller, the mother of youth football player Jovon “Jo Jo” Mangual, 13, who died during the Oso mudslide, in Arlington.
Jason Redmond/Reuters
Fish numbers are rapidly dwindling globally, and fishery subsidies are one of the key drivers behind this decline.
This common lionfish (Pterois volitans) was sighted more than 200km further south than expected down the NSW coast by 14-year-old scuba diver Georgia Poyner. It’s one of almost 40 verified observations she has submitted to Redmap.
Redmap/Georgia Poyner
We know the warming seas are forcing some marine life to new waters, but we don’t know much about how fast and how far they are moving. But now you can help scientists find the answers with Redmap.
Time to get cracking: a Canadian research vessel in the Arctic.
John F. Williams/Office of Naval Research
A melting Arctic means new areas will be open to commercial fishing but scientists – and bordering countries – say they need time to study the ecological and economic risks.
St Andrews is green – but is it environmentally friendly?
David Davies/PA
The quest for perfect lush greens is a relatively recent development in the sport’s history.
Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka with a group of children in Lagos. Research suggests that literacy in a mother tongue is a building block for multilingualism.
Akintunde Akinleye/Reuters
Research tells us that multilingual literacy matters. But teaching children in Africa to read in their mother tongues as a springboard to literacy in other languages can be a fraught process.
In the age of social media, misinformation travels rapidly around the globe.
AAP
It has become one of the hallmarks of the news now. Whenever there is a dramatic event, social media instantly comes alive with comment and conjecture as facts vie for attention with fiction. Alongside…
The printed word or waving flags, such as this ISIS banner, can only reach so many people.
EPA
On an overcast afternoon in London in May 2013, an off-duty soldier named Lee Rigby was murdered near his barracks in Woolwich, southeast London. Rigby’s killers were two young British men of Nigerian…
Think twice before you over-react.
Jim Bourg/Reuters
Whatever you do, don’t turn to Twitter for news about Ebola. The volume and tone of tweets and retweets about the disease will make you wish you were watching the zombie apocalypse of The Walking Dead…
The Ottoman Chief Eunuch was an influential figure. In this and other caliphates, eunuchs supervised the harem, the princes, the financial affairs of the palace and the mosques, as well as controlling access to the ruler.
Photo postcard 1912
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed Islamic State (IS) as a Muslim caliphate on June 29, 2014, with himself as caliph, a term reserved for a successor to the prophet Muhammad (PBUH). His would be the newest…
Plenty of food in the shops, so why are people going hungry?
Julien Behal/PA
The only things that seem to be really growing in the UK and US economies these days are hunger and food insecurity. The growth of food banks and other forms of hunger-relief charities is a strong reminder…
How can we make truly informed decisions if the scientific community itself is shut down?
AAP Image/Dean Lewins
Despite the enormous success of the environmental movement in the 1960s and 70s, we have fundamentally failed to use each of those battles to broaden the public understanding of why we were battling. It…
The deliberate act of falsely representing, labelling or advertising food, known as “food fraud”, is not a recent phenomenon. The deceitful adulteration of food has a long history based on the promise…
How does a hippo know it should be big?
PA/David Cheskin
Mammals display an incredible diversity in size. The largest mammal, the blue whale, can grow up to 30m long and weigh up to 200 tonnes. Now compare that to the Bumblebee bat, which is 3cm long and weighs…
Scientists say legalising the trade in rhino horn would help save rhinos from extinction.
AAP/Australian Science Media Centre
Global bans on rhinoceros products have failed, and legalisation is required to save rhinos from extinction, argue scientists. In a paper published today in journal Science, University of Queensland researcher…