• Dec. 6: Carols at UBC
• Dec. 7: UBC Science Show: Planes, Trains, Automobiles and Rockets
• Dec. 8: Antibiotic-Resistance – the Ongoing Arms Race
• Dec. 9: Mysteries of the Dark Universe - Dr. Rocky Kolb
• Dec. 10: President's Blue and Gold Revue
• Dec. 11: Hänsel und Gretel

Visit UBCevents, UBC's new campus-wide calendar: www.events.ubc.ca

Exercer la médecine traditionnelle chinoise dans un cadre réglementaire et formalisé en Côte d'Ivoire. C'est ce que veulent les acteurs dudit secteur. Ce souhait a été exprimé ce jeudi 4 décembre à Abidjan-Adjamé. C'était lors de la cérémonie d'ouverture

pWhite lemuroid possums--otherwise known as Hemibelideus lemuroids--may have become the first mammal to disappear because of climate change, according to an Australian researcher. The cute marsupials restricted to certain mountaintops in the prehistoric quot;Lost Worldquot; of far northern tropical Queensland, Australia, may have fallen victim to an average temperature rise of at least 1.2 degrees Fahrenheit (0.5 degrees Celsius) over the last several decades. a href=http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=global-warmings-first-mammal-victim-2008-12-04[More]/a

Microsoft announced the hire of former ten-year Yahoo exec Dr. Qi Lu today as President of their Online Services Group. He’ll report directly to CEO Steve Ballmer.

Here’s the email Ballmer sent to all Microsoft staff forty minutes ago:

From: Steve Ballmer
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 1:39 PM
To: Microsoft - All Employees (QBDG)
Subject: New Leader of Online Services Group

Search, advertising and online services are critical to Microsoft’s long-term strategy. To succeed, we need the right talent. Today, I’m pleased to announce that Qi Lu will join Microsoft as president of our Online Services Group. Qi will oversee all efforts in search, our online advertising platform, and all of our online information and communications services. Qi will join Microsoft on Jan. 5 and report to me.

Qi is one of the most respected technical minds in the industry. He comes to Microsoft after 10 years at Yahoo, where he most recently served as executive vice president of engineering for all of Yahoo’s search and advertising development efforts. Before joining Yahoo, Qi was a researcher at IBM’s Almaden Research Center. He has a doctorate in computer science from Carnegie Mellon, and he holds 20 U.S. patents.

Qi’s combination of deep technical expertise, proven leadership capability and broad business knowledge is rare in our industry. There is no one better qualified to guide our work to reinvent search and online advertising.

While I’m excited that Qi is joining Microsoft, I’m sorry to share the news that Brian McAndrews has decided to transition out of the company. Brian came to us with the acquisition of aQuantive in 2007. Since then, he has helped build a world-class business in online advertising that provides a solid foundation for future growth. I have great respect for the important contributions Brian has made to Microsoft, and I wish him the very best in the future.

On Monday at 4 p.m. Pacific Time, Qi will join me at Café RedWest for an Employee Town Hall. I encourage you to attend or to watch the webcast. If you have questions for Qi or me, please send them in advance to and we’ll try to answer as many as possible.

Steve

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

pEditors note: Marine geophysicist Robin Bell is leading an expedition to Antarctica to explore a mysterious mountain range beneath the ice sheet. Following is the eigth of her updates on the effort as part of ScientificAmerican.coms in-depth report on the quot;Future of the Poles.quot;/ppCAPE EVANS, ANTARCTICA -- The first weekend we were here ldquo;on the ice,rdquo; we had an opportunity to travel up the coast about 18 miles.nbsp; The annual sea ice is six feet thick, and we would be transported on top of this in a giant orange vehicle with wheels five feet tall, called a Delta./p a href=http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=dispatches-from-the-bottom-of-the-e-2008-12-04[More]/a

div class="center"div class="image"a href="http://pixhost.ws/avaxhome/big_show.php?/avaxhome/54/fd/0009fd54.jpeg" target="_blank"img src="http://pixhost.ws/avaxhome/54/fd/0009fd54_medium.jpeg" id="external_img_654676"//a/div br/ bSoaring Through the Universe: Astronomy Through Children's Literature/b br/ 191 pages | Teacher Ideas Press (March 15, 1999) | ISBN-10: 1563085607 | rar'd html | 1,5 Mb/div br/ Teach the basics of astronomical and space science using lively retellings of traditional folktales and quality children's literature. Reproducible activities and project ideas that meet NSTA standards combine stories and facts with language arts, math, science, art, and music, using the multiple intelligences approach. An extensive bibliography and other resources, such as addresses for Web sites and organizations in the area of astronomy and space science, are included. Grades 3-6 (adaptable to other levels). br/

A Closer Look | See-Through Perovskite | Solid State in a Cloud of Atoms | A Tunnel Clock | Bio-Inspired Materials Engineering | Martian Rhythmic Rocks | Blue-Light Response | A Matter of Life and Death | A Divisive Tale | How to Feed Your Neurons | Tolerating Maternal Influences | Toward Normalizing Metabolic Regulation | What Is Behind the Secondary Inward Current? | Selfish Flowers

pimg class="float_right" src="/~~/f?id=493851f7796c7a3400e7ad29maxX=224maxY=315" border="0" alt="qilu.jpg" title="qilu.jpg" width="224" height="315" /It's official: Former Yahoo (YHOO) tech star Qi Lu has been named to head up Microsoft's (MSFT) Online Services Group. The job puts Lu in charge of web search and online advertising for Microsoft and Windows Live./p pRumors Lu was a contender for the job have been circulating since a report on a href="http://kara.allthingsd.com/20081204/former-yahoo-tech-star-qi-lu-likely-to-be-named-microsofts-digital-head-by-next-week/"AllThingsD/a this morning. /p pA big day of change for Microsoft. The company also said Brian McAndrews, SVP of Microsoft's Advertiser Publisher Solutions Group, would be leaving the company. McAndrews was said to be vying for the job that went to Lu./p pThe full release:/p p style="padding-left: 30px;"Microsoft Corp. today announced that Dr. Qi Lu will join the company as president of the Online Services Group. Dr. Lu will lead Microsoft's efforts in search and online advertising and all the company's online information and communications services. Dr. Lu will report to Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer.br /br /Lu most recently served as executive vice president of Engineering for the Search and Advertising Technology Group at Yahoo!, where he was responsible for development efforts around Yahoo!'s Web search and monetization platforms. Dr. Lu left Yahoo! in August 2008 after 10 years of service.br /br /'I am tremendously excited to welcome Qi to Microsoft,' Ballmer said. 'Dr. Lu's deep technical expertise, leadership capabilities and hard-working mentality are well-known in the technology industry, and Microsoft will benefit from his addition to our executive management team.'br /br /'I am genuinely excited about the opportunities ahead for Microsoft to make an enormous impact on the online industry,' Dr. Lu said. 'Microsoft has built a great foundation for its search and advertising technologies and put an amazing team of researchers and engineers in place to drive the next wave of innovation in online services. I'm looking forward to working with them to help transform the way people and businesses use the Internet to find and share information.'br /Before his most recent role at Yahoo!, Lu was vice president of engineering responsible for the technology development of Yahoo!'s Search and Marketplace business unit, which includes the company's search, e-commerce, and local listings of businesses and products.br /Before joining Yahoo! in 1998, Dr. Lu was a Research Staff Member at IBM Almaden Research Center. Before IBM, Dr. Lu worked at Carnegie Mellon University as a Research Associate, and at Fudan University in China as a faculty member. Dr. Lu holds 20 U.S. patents, and received his bachelor of science and master of science in computer science from Fudan University and his Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University.br /br /Lu's first day at Microsoft will be Jan. 5, 2009. In his role running the Online Services Group, he will oversee several groups including the Advertiser Publisher Solutions business, managed by Scott Howe who was promoted to corporate vice president; the Online Audience business, managed by Senior Vice President Yusuf Mehdi; OSG Research Development, managed by Senior Vice President Satya Nadella; and OSG Finance, managed by Rik van der Kooi who was promoted to corporate vice president.br /br /With the successful integration of aQuantive now complete, Brian McAndrews, former CEO of aQuantive and senior vice president of Microsoft's Advertiser Publisher Solutions Group, has decided to transition out of Microsoft, and will do so over the next several months, serving in a consultative capacity to Steve Ballmer and Qi Lu during that time.br /br /'Brian McAndrews built a world-class business for advertisers and publishers and led the successful integration of aQuantive into Microsoft, setting the foundation for our next phase of growth,' Ballmer said. 'While I am sorry to see Brian leave the company, I respect and understand his decision and wish him nothing but the best in the future.'br /br /'I also want to congratulate Scott and Rik on their well-deserved promotions and look forward to their leadership in the Online Services Group alongside Qi, Yusuf and Satya,' Ballmer said.br /br /As part of today's announcement, several teams will move to further align resources. The field sales organizations in the Online Services Group will move to Microsoft's centralized Sales, Marketing and Services Group led by chief operating officer Kevin Turner. This group, called Consumer Online, will be led by Corporate Vice President Darren Huston and will include the Global Advertising Sales and Services organization, led by vice president Bill Shaughnessy./p p /p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/YuP-xJtJ_ZcHQoExgwJdm6seqdE/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/YuP-xJtJ_ZcHQoExgwJdm6seqdE/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=rXQFlbWa"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=rXQFlbWa" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=p1Hmvooz"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=zWPnp8L3"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=80" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=pRiX0vW7"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=131" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=BDKSxZYb"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=336" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=BAYhUkos"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=UjKrJNIr"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=50" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~4/BWcjoMFR028" height="1" width="1"/

pSome lucky viewers will feel as if theyre right on the field at tonights football game between the Oakland Raiders and the San Diego Chargers, without going any farther than their local movie house. In addition to the usual TV coverage, the game will be simulcast in 3-D to private theater audiences in Los Angeles, New York and Boston by the Burbank, Calif., firm 3ality Digital. a href=http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=live-nfl-football-goes-3-d-tonight-2008-12-04[More]/a

Craig Yoe says: My new book that I edited and designed, The Best of Sexology collects the wackiest and most unintentionally funny articles from America's first sex magazine, Sexology, The Illustrated Magazine of Sex Science. "Homosexual Chickens", "Adolph Hitler's Sex Life", "Sex and Satan", "Twin Beds or Single?", "Sexual Tattooing", "When Midgets Marry" are just a few of the subjects covered...or should I say uncovered? The publisher of "Sexology", started in 1933, was Hugo Gernsbach, who published the first pulps of science fiction (the term originated in his pubs) and the science fiction award The Hugo is named after him. Gernsback used his science fiction writers and artists (like Frank Paul) to produce Sexology. There's a peek at the book here and I'll be on Fix TV's Red Eye show Fri. nite/Sat. morn at 2:00 a.m. to talk about it. The Best of Sexology: Kinky and Kooky Excerpts from America's First Sex Magazine...br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=f0e6a8adf924868c36b6a7a52d547ab3p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=f0e6a8adf924868c36b6a7a52d547ab3p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=f0e6a8adf924868c36b6a7a52d547ab3" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

pIf you want to watch news travel fast, make sure it's about the newspaper industry. Fitch, a credit-rating service, has predicted that some daily newspapers will go out of business as their parent companies default on their debt and are forced to liquidate. But this prediction is extreme: There are interim steps that papers can take to stave off the cash drain. /p p Even if Fitch is right, what if instead of liquidating the assets, the papers were reclassified and/or contributed to a not-for-profit. Presumably, someone could benefit from the tax write-off. Sam Zell, owner of Tribune, sold Newsday earlier this year; perhaps there was a gain he wants to offset. He could contribute the Baltimore Sun to a newly established not-for-profit. There was a group in Baltimore that wanted to buy the paper when Tribune was originally for sale--that group could serve as management for the paper and oversee the not-for-profit. /p p While converting to a not-for-profit won't improve the financials, it would allow the paper to ask for philanthropic support, not unlike public radio or television stations. This isn't meant to be a solution to the industry woes but instead a thought that came about after reading that McClatchy (a href="http://finance.paidcontent.org/paidcontent?Page=QUOTETicker=MNI" class="ticker" title="MNI"NYSE: MNI/a) was collaborating with the Christian Science Monitor, a not-for-profit, in some of their overseas news bureaus. I hadn't realized there were any not-for-profit papers. I'm also encouraged by the establishment of ProPublica, a not-for-profit investigative-journalism organization led by former Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger.nbsp; /p p Recently, I had an on-air personality from one of the local PBS radio stations present to my media-management class at Kent State University. Listening to him discuss the support for the station and the support for National Public Radio, I have to believe there's enough support out there for a newspaper. If the goal is to save some of these daily newspapers, perhaps this idea could save a few. /p p iLauren Rich Fine is ContentNext's Research Director. /p p /i /p piSocial Media Deals Report: This 199-page report, filled with charts and data, examines the categories, number and size of VC and MA deal in social media from 2007 through 2008. stronga href="http://www.paidcontent.org/reports/"Visit the ContentNext Reports page/a/strongi/p pa href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?a=3YrmKe"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?i=3YrmKe" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=afiPO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=afiPO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=V9ijO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=V9ijO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=beUWo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=beUWo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=RJzKO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=RJzKO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=QkByO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=QkByO" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/pcorg/~4/475058300" height="1" width="1"/

pInherited forms of anemia may soon be treated by turning on a gene normally active only in the womb. Researchers report today in Science that they have discovered the molecular switch for activating the fetal form of hemoglobin--the iron-containing protein in red blood cells that transports oxygen--which could help alleviate the symptoms of genetic blood disorders, including sickle cell anemia, which affects an estimated 70,000 people (mostly African-Americans) in the U.S. a href=http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=new-hope-for-sickle-cell-sufferers[More]/a

The launch of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) has been delayed by two years to the northern autumn of 2011. As Scotty used to say, you cannae change the...

pScientists at Karolinska Institutet (KI) in Stockholm report that they were able to make people perceive the bodies of mannequins and other people as their own. Their findings, published online this week by PLoS ONE, could help people suffering from body image disorders and be a boon for virtual reality developers to improve the control and realism of their systems and robot makers eager to create appendages that can more easily be remotely controlled. a href=http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=mind-games-researchers-trick-people-2008-12-04[More]/a

iJournal of cell science (25 November 2008)/ibr /br /MOR1, the Arabidopsis thaliana homologue of the Xenopus microtubule-associated protein MAP215, is required for spatial organization of the acentrosomal microtubule arrays of plant cells. To determine how loss of MOR1 function affects microtubule dynamics, we compared various parameters of microtubule dynamics in the temperature-sensitive mor1-1 mutant at its permissive and restrictive temperatures, 21 degrees C and 31 degrees C, respectively. Dynamic events were tracked in live cells expressing either GFP-tagged beta-tubulin or the plus end tracking EB1. Microtubule growth and shrinkage velocities were both dramatically reduced in mor1-1 at 31 degrees C and the incidence and duration of pause events increased. Interestingly, the association of EB1 with microtubule plus ends was reduced in mor1-1 whereas side wall binding increased, suggesting that MOR1 influences the association of EB1 with microtubules either by modulating microtubule plus end structure or by interacting with EB1. Although mor1-1 microtubules grew and shrank more slowly than wild-type microtubules at 21 degrees C, the incidence of pause was not altered, suggesting that pause events, which occur more frequently at 31 degrees C, have a major detrimental role in the spatial organization of cortical microtubules. Extensive increases in microtubule dynamics in wild-type cells when shifted from 21 degrees C to 31 degrees C underline the importance of careful temperature control in live cell imaging.br /iEiko Kawamura, Geoffrey O Wasteneys/i

div class="center"div class="image"a href="http://pixhost.ws/avaxhome/big_show.php?/avaxhome/d0/fc/0009fcd0.jpeg" target="_blank"img src="http://pixhost.ws/avaxhome/d0/fc/0009fcd0_medium.jpeg" id="external_img_654544"//a/divbr/ bThe Science of Being Great/bbr/ ISBN n/a | edition 2002 | PDF | 72 pages | 1.81 mb/div

pAs world leaders meet in Poznan, Poland this week and next to discuss efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions causing global warming, its worth remembering that scientists have known climate change could be a problem for a long time. a href=http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=climate-change-is-old-news-scientis-2008-12-04[More]/a

div style="float:right;"img border=0 title="ATT And ChaCha Team Up" alt="ATT And ChaCha Team Up" src="http://www.uberphones.com/photos/2008/12/att.jpg" hspace="5" vspace="5" //div pATT and ChaCha have announced that they’ll be working together in a strategic relationship which will see ChaCha use a co-branded greeting and promote ATT when customers call 1-800-2ChaCha. They will also be working closely together to enhance ChaCha’s free mobile-answers service, as well as explore opportunities for text and voice ad-based services. ChaCha will continue to provide free answers to questions, which can cover topics from science, culture, sports and more./p pPermalink: a href="http://www.uberphones.com/2008/12/others/att_and_chacha_team_up/"ATamp;T And ChaCha Team Up/a from a href="http://www.uberphones.com"Uberphones/a | a href="http://www.uberbargain.com/"Good deals/a | Hot: a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/11/blackberry_storm_review.html"BlackBerry Storm/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/zy3nqyi6KbJVJFmMDuHI3Zz92vo/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/zy3nqyi6KbJVJFmMDuHI3Zz92vo/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

NEON Prototype Debuts | Stem Cell Patent Nixed | Become a ScienceInsider | Biologist's Legal Battle Ends | Coral Reefs Still Reeling | Bright Future for X-rays

Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER) is a bimonthly series of lectures and presentations organized by Piero Scaruffi on behalf of Leonardo/ISAST.br / br / Admission is free but limited. Please RSVP to p (at) scaruffi (dot) com to attend.br / br / Schedule:br / br / 6:00pm-6:45pm: Socializing/networking.br / br / 6:45-7:15: Steve Wilson, artist and author, on "Overview of Art and Biology Experimentation"br / br / 7:15-7:45: Paul Rabinowbr / br / 7:45-8:15: Dor Abrahamson of Berkeley's Embodied Design Research Lab on "Close Listening to Gesture - An Embodied-Design Perspective on Mathematical Reasoning"br / br / 8:15-8:45: Kavita Philip and Beatriz da Costa on "Tactical Biopolitics: Art, Activism and Technoscience"img src="http://rhizome.org/syndicate/nothing.gif?f=announce" border="0"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/rhizome-announce/~4/475087967" height="1" width="1"/

UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner is a pioneer in the study of an emotion known as "elevation," characterized by a "a feeling of spreading, liquid warmth in the chest and a lump in the throat." (Not be confused with heartburn.) Triggering that emotion in the lab is challenging. His research group's latest approach though is to play their subjects Barack Obama's victory speech. (My IFTF colleague Jason Tester has dubbed the impact of Obama on people's brains "neurobama.") Slate has a great profile of "elevation" research, including the work of moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, author of The Happiness Hypothesis. I also look forward to reading Keltner's forthcoming book on the subject of "elevation," titled Born To Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life (which is not an Obama biography). From Slate: Elevation has always existed but has just moved out of the realm of philosophy and religion and been recognized as a distinct emotional state and a subject for psychological study. Psychology has long focused on what goes wrong, but in the past decade there has been an explosion of interest in "positive psychology"—what makes us feel good and why. University of Virginia moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who coined the term elevation, writes, "Powerful moments of elevation sometimes seem to push a mental 'reset button,' wiping out feelings of cynicism and replacing them with feelings of hope, love, and optimism, and a sense of moral inspiration...." We come to elevation, Haidt writes, through observing others—their strength of character, virtue, or "moral beauty." Elevation evokes in us "a desire to become a better person, or to lead a better life." "Obama in Your Heart" (Slate), Buy "Born To Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life" (Amazon), Buy "The Happiness Hypothesis" (Amazon)...br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=26e20096747314259a7e32045fa2ec27p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=26e20096747314259a7e32045fa2ec27p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=26e20096747314259a7e32045fa2ec27" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

C