Massive open-house of thousands of laboratories across Canada coming May 11!

By Pippa Wysong

What has a million legs, a few thousand open doors and things that make you go ‘ooh!’ and ‘aww!’? If you said Science Rendezvous, you’re right! This is a nation-wide event that will take place Saturday May 11, and it’s for the whole family.

What is Science Rendezvous? Think of it as a massive open-house where thousands of laboratories across the country open their doors to the public. The whole family can visit labs at universities and other institutions and see where real research is done. You can meet scientists who will answer your questions, give tours of their labs, and do demos – many of which you can try out yourself.

Explosive fun from Science Rendezvous 2012.
For more blasts (and other stuff) from the past,
check out Science Rendezvous's video gallery.
Photo courtesy of Science Rendezvous.

I ventured into the Science Rendezvous festival the last two years, and found it an amazing experience. I got to talk to geologists, astronomers of various types, and even spoke to a researcher working with flat-worms who was trying to figure out what it is that makes these creatures grow new body parts and be basically immortal. (Read a previous blog I wrote about it.)

This year, I’ve gotten involved. In fact, I’ll be at this year’s event all day, hosting a vaccine education tent that will be on the University of Toronto campus on St. George Street. Look for the tent where people are handing out surgical masks and letting you visit our actors portraying people sick with diseases such as Spanish flu, polio and smallpox.

There will be things that appeal to all ages. Across Canada, there will be experiments and activities for the kids, lectures for the adults, and displays for people of all ages. And not everything is indoors. There will be tents erected on university grounds where various demos and exhibits will reside and contribute to a festival atmosphere.

There will be even be science activities at a shopping Mall! Cape Breton University is hosting the Mall of Science at the Mayflower Shopping Mall where there will be a variety of hands-on activities.

Toronto has 17 venues participating, including 4 universities, 2 hospitals, research centres, libraries, and the Ontario Science Centre.

This is the only science festival of its kind in Canada, and the biggest. What makes it different from other science outreach events is that it’s the only one where the public gets direct access to real-live researchers and their labs, and find out exactly what novel areas they are working on. Other science outreach groups mostly focus on doing hands-on experiments that demonstrate basic scientific principles.

To find out more, tune in to the Discovery Channel’s Daily Planet show. Each day for the week leading up to May 11, scientists participating in Science Rendezvous will be on the show describing and showing off a tiny sampling of the things you’ll experience.

Mark May 11, 2013, on your calendar now! Here are some highlights of things to come:

• Science on Stage at Toronto’s Yonge-Dundas Square, Ontario. With Daily Planet’s Dan Riskin. Ryerson University hosts the Science on Stage event at Yonge-Dundas Square in Toronto. See the ever-popular Sumo Robot Competition, a machine-vs-machine battle to the death, the Dance of Science featuring Ryerson’s renowned performing arts programs, and a spectacular fire show! Dan Riskin will host and do some amazing science himself!

• The Role of Gender in Science Communication, Vancouver. As a prelude to the main event happening on campus, University of British Columbia (UBC) will present a public lecture on the role of gender in science communication on May 10th, 2013 from 5:30-7:00pm. Open forum and panel discussions will be led by Dr. Jennifer Gardy from UBC. On May 11, UBC labs will open their doors.

• Science Jeopardy, Oshawa, Ontario. The University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) presents flaming gummy bears, liquid nitrogen fun and Science Jeopardy. Examine forensic evidence to solve a crime scene, levitate a magnet, discover the sensational sliminess of creating polymers, create a Maggot Masterpiece, and isolate your own DNA.

And much, much more!
For more details: http://www.sciencerendezvous.ca/2013/

Life in Wascana Lake: Aquatic ecosystem studies

By Marie Powell

I had the chance to learn more about Regina's man-made Wascana Lake recently in a new speaker's night at the Saskatchewan Science Centre.

One of the speakers was Dr. Richard Vogt. He has a postdoctoral fellowship in biology at the University of Regina to study structure and functioning of aquatic communities and ecosystems. He works with Dr. Peter Leavitt in the Limnology Lab, using the long-term database of lakes in the Qu'Appelle River catchment to explore important questions in limnology (meaning the study of freshwater lakes and marshes) and aquatic ecology.

Limnology lab scientists monitor Wascana Lake as one of six major lakes in the Qu'Appelle Valley wastershed, Vogt told about 30 people who came to hear three speakers on water issues on May 4, to open the exhibit "Water's Extreme Journey." Vogt grew up in Ontario and took his PhD in Aquatic Community Ecolology from the University of Quebec in Montreal. He said his colleagues would envy the U of R for its “rare and valuable” database of samples, collected every two weeks – in all seasons – for some 16 years.

Part of Vogt's studies with Leavitt include the effect of Regina’s “Big Dig” in 2004. During the $18-million Wascana Lake Revitalization Project, or “Big Dig" as it's known locally, Wascana was dredged from about 1.5 metres to about five metres in depth, removing over 1.3 million cubic metres of soil in about four months. (More on the dig can be found in The Big Dig: The Miracle of Wascana Centre by Bob Hughes.)

Vogt's studies show that surprisingly, the project hasn’t affected Wascana Lake the way scientists predicted it would. For example, scientists predicted the dredging would make the lake less clear and cause an increase in algae. Up to then, he said, rooted plants locked up the nutrients in the lake sediments, providing a habitat for zooplankton that graze on algae. Plants growing all the way to the water’s surface would get caught in people’s boat oars, and have to be mulched periodically.

But the dredging caused “no change in the most important water quality indicators” in the lake, Vogt said. Although the overall number of plants was reduced, there has been no increase in algae, and no decrease in clarity. There are some differences in algae species that thrive in the lake, but “for the most part we see a similar diversity,” he added.

For more information, check http://www.uregina.ca/biology/faculty/Leavitt/labsite_files/wascana.html

Marie Powell is the author of Dragonflies are Amazing! (Scholastic Canada, Grade Two Guided Reading, 2007). (Note: A version of this material appears in Marie's article in Metro Regina print edition, May 10 2012. Photo: Wascana Lights by L L Melton.)

Logan Science Journalism Fellowship - With Video!

The Science Journalism A-Team

More Fun Than You Ever Had In School

Shar Levine

Logan Science Journalism Fellowship

An Introduction

Although I live on the west coast of British Columbia, I find myself writing this from the east coast of the United States.  Fog horns echo into the night as a thick blanket settles on the waters surrounding Woods Hole. For the next 10 days I will be attending the Logan Science Journalism Fellowship offered by the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) located in Woods Hole, Mass. The MBL is the oldest private marine laboratory in North America. To quote the introductory video, "MBL is to marine biologists what Paris is to artists." More than 50 Nobel Laureates have studied, researched or have taught at this facility.  There's more to MBL than the obvious interest in things in the water.  The facility conducts research on ecosystems, and cell biology as it relates to humans. They also use sea creatures to conduct studies on biomedical, biological and ecological issues.  If that weren't ambitious enough, they are the brains behind the Encyclopedia of Life project.  The aim of this web site is to create a page for all 1.8 million species that live on our planet.  Ooops make that 1,800,002 million as more species are discovered each day.

MBL has selected 15 journalists from around the world who will be working with scientists on two programs. One group has headed out into the marshlands on Cape Cod to study the effects of pollution on the ecology and the environment. I was delighted not to join them as they headed off into the wilderness, sleeping bags and packed dinners in hand.  Instead I had a leisurely stroll down the campus to the lab where I was allowed to play with really cool microscopes. This week I will be studying sea urchins and seeing how the cells of these simple creatures related to humans. 

The course is a boot camp in basic biomedical research.  It would be an understatement to say that the material is heavy. We are looking at genomes and molecular genetics as they relate to humans and diseases.  So why sea urchins?  To quote from the course material, "a model organism is a species that has been widely studied usually because it is easy to maintain and breed in a laboratory setting and has particular experimental advantages." This means that the creature is cheap, simple to use, and  no one feels too bad about poking sea urchins with needles. So bright and early tomorrow I am off to fertilize sea urchin eggs and watch them grow. At each stage we will be taking photomicrographs (pictures taken of the images seen in a microscope). I will be using special stains that show different parts of the cells, which is a thrill because normally I only get to use ink or food coloring.  It's nice to play in an adult lab.

Will post photos as the day progresses.

Shar Levine