App Reviews

engaging canada’s young scientists

On May 6, 2016, as part of a special kick off to ScienceOdyssey, a 10-day national celebration of science-based activities and events across Canada, Canada’s federal government announced it was committing $4.8 million in funding towards science education initiatives at 43 different organizations across the country.

The announcement was made at the Canadian Association of Science Centre’s annual conference in Vancouver, BC, where Canada’s Minister of Science Kirsty Duncan was on hand to unveil the new PromoScience Program at the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). Minister Duncan discussed the merits of the program, and its mandate to enable science outreach across Canada. The program hopes to fulfill its mandate through the support of science centres, day camps, after-school programs, science outreach organizations, networks and more. Essentially, it hopes to encourage the engagement of youth in the science and engineering fields.

The Minister also used the PromoScience Program launch as an opportunity to reemphasize her government’s commitment to promoting more openness and transparency when it comes to the communication of science and evidence-based policymaking. There was also some further discussion around the previously noted establishment of a Chief Science Officer for Canada.

“I have examined how similar positions, often called a chief science adviser, work in other countries such as the United Kingdom, New Zealand, the United States and Israel. My survey of international models will help create a position that is modern and yet tailor-made to suit Canada,” she said.

As for how the 10 day science celebration played out, activities included science in the streets, visits to labs, science fairs, talks, conferences, school field trips, encounters with researchers and scientists, special exhibits at museums and science centres, and much more.

The celebration of youth science continued later in May with the CanadaWide Science Festival. In all, nearly $1 million in cash awards and scholarships were awarded to some of Canada’s most promising young scientists from Grades 7 to 12. Among the winners were Kayley Ting from Richmond Hill, ON who won the Best in Fair and Intermediate Platinum award for her project: Analysis of Electrodermal Activity to Quantify Stress Levels in Autism. The Senior Platinum award went to Katherine Teeter from Markdale, ON, for her project: Synthetic Limpet Teeth for Improved Joint Performance, and finally the Junior Platinum award went to Sophie Hoye Pacholek from Calgary, AB, for her project: The Genius Genus: Aspen Adaptation.

Likewise, as per our cover story, Iveta Demirova from New Westminster Secondary School in New Westminster, BC took top honours at the national final of the prestigious Sanofi Biogenius Canada (SBC) competition in Ottawa. The 16-year-old, grade 11 student, was chosen by the judges for her research project exploring the development of a novel HIV-1 therapy. The results of Iveta’s research project, completed with the support of mentor Dr. Ralph Pantophlet of Simon Fraser University, could offer numerous advantages to those living with HIV, which remains one of the world’s leading infectious diseases. She will now progress to the 2016 International BioGENEius Challenge in San Francisco in June, where she will submit her work to a panel of pre-eminent international scientists. We wish her, and her fellow Canadian competitors luck, and we’re excited to see them shine on the world stage!

aPP review

The Elements A Visual Exploration

From Touch Press for iOS/iPad and iPhone http://apps.theodoregray.com/the-elements/

Designed for chemistry students, and pretty much anyone interested in science, this app based on Theodore Gray’s The Elements brings users the periodic table like they’ve never seen it before. Each element has two pages devoted to it, including a 3D virtual reality (VR) depiction of the element, either in its natural form or some product made from it, along with its chemical symbol, atomic number. Users can even view individual elements via an animation set to a theme song. For recently discovered elements, an image of the person it’s named for is shown instead, but the site does include a breakdown for these elements as well. In general, users can rotate and manipulate any of the 500+ objects with a simple sideways swipe or by touching the illustration. Along with extensive background detail for each element, the app also embeds real-time computational data from Wolfram Alpha. Our verdict, this app is a both entertaining and educational, and worth the asking price.

PubMedOn Tap

By ReferencesOnTap for iOS-based mobile devices https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pubmed-on-tap/ id301316540?mt=8

With PubMed On Tap users can search PubMed and retrieve articles directly from their phones or tablets. According to the tool’s iTunes page, users can also “search personal reference libraries, organize references in groups (static and smart), and email references from their device to themselves or others.” The Advanced Search screen lets you pick your fields without having to know field code abbreviations, which is probably more helpful for most users. Additionally, two concepts can be searched at a time. Numerous search options from PubMed are available, including publication type, date, subset (which includes systematic review and core clinical journal filters), and gender. Once you view a PDF, it downloads to the app and becomes accessible through the Authors and Attachments Smart Groups. The makers of this app offer two versions: PubMed on Tap and the free PubMed on Tap Lite. The two are essentially the same, except that the Lite version includes ads, displays only 20 references per online search, and allows you to save only 50 references. We recommend you try it first to see if this app meets your needs. Unfortunately the app can’t be used by Android users, however, they have PubMed Mobile as their option.