Dr. Elizabeth Simpson is leading a project that is developing tools that will improve gene therapy and help treat brain disorders like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

The Pleiades Promoter Project is based at the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics in Vancouver.

I had the chance to speak to Beth about the project. Have a listen or download the first Science Perspectives podcast:

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Hundreds will die if the safe injection site in Vancouver’s Downtown East closes, said a banner at the street party held along the 100-block of East Hastings tonight.

The event was trying to send a message to Stephen Harper: don’t play politics with peoples’ lives.

“It really comes down to one man who doesn’t understand the issue. It shouldn’t be about politics. It should be about public health”, said Mark Townsend, executive director of the Portland Hotel Society which runs Insite, in the Vancouver Sun.

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Asthma is a chronic disease that is on the rise in Canada. Often, it starts in childhood.

There’s something about the first few years of life. What happens in those years seems to have a big effect on the development of asthma.

Maybe it’s the crib the baby slept in. Maybe it’s the exposure it had to animals. Maybe it’s the interaction of these environments with a baby’s genetic make-up. We just don’t know.

Dr. Malcom R. Sears, professor of medicine at McMaster University, is leading a study that looks at how genes and the environment affect the development of asthma in childhood. His research project, the Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development study, will follow 5,000 children from when they’re inside the womb to their fifth birthday.

Dr. Sears’ hypothesis is that a child’s environment will affect how well their lungs work as adults.

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Today is the first day of December. You know what that means—there’s only 24 days left to buy Christmas presents.

And it’s also World AIDS Day.

You probably didn’t know that. I didn’t.

There’s one important factor in the AIDS epidemic that doesn’t get much attention. Tuberculosis has become an epidemic in many parts of the developing world where HIV infection rates are high.

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Climate change, now that’s a term that’s starting to lose its meaning.

What climate change really means was the focus of a  talk given by Massachusetts Institute of Techonology PhD candidate in History, Anthropology, and Science Technology and Soceity, Candis Callison at the UBC School of Journalism this afternoon.

When Callison visited the Alaskan town of Kotzebue, she was surprised to find an absence of dialogue on climate change.

“That’s not what we talk about,” said a resident of Kotzebue, “It’s what’s on CNN.”

As Callison got to know the community, she found that the people of Kotzebue do in fact, talk about climate change. They just don’t call it that.

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