UBC Reports | Vol. 51 | No. 6 | Jun. 2, 2005

In the News

Highlights of UBC Media Coverage in May 2005

Compiled by Brian Lin

High Price of Flying to Toronto

For the second consecutive year, Toronto's Pearson International Airport has ranked second in an annual survey of the highest landing fees at airports around the world.

UBC air transportation expert Tae Oum from the Sauder School of Business, told The Globe and Mail that Pearson should restrain any further future increases in landing fees to ensure that foreign airlines maintain Toronto as a North American gateway.

Oum added that Pearson needs to diversify its revenue stream into areas such as retailing, fast food, car parking and leasing space to airport users.

UBC Building a Model of Sustainable Architecture

In Canada, composting toilets have made their way into retail and academic buildings.

Since its completion in 1996, the C.K. Choi Building for the Institute of Asian Research at UBC has remained a model of sustainable architecture, reports The Chicago Tribune.

The three-story, $4.5-million building features five composting toilets, functioning completely off the sewerage and power grids. The building’s five compost bins only need to be emptied every 10 years. Ninety percent of the waste is urine, pumped out and treated in a constructed wetland, and red wriggler worms digest the solid waste.

Learning Exchange Cultivates Global Citizens

Since the UBC Learning Exchange set up shop in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside in 2000, the number of student volunteers has grown from 30 to 800 last year, reports The Globe and Mail.

With programs and resources including women’s centres, community kitchens and inner-city schools, the Learning Exchange is a great example of Trek 2010, the university’s mission statement which vows to produce graduates who are global citizens and contributors to the well-being of society.

Prof Rocks Wall for Safer Schools

UBC earthquake engineering professor Carlos Ventura is pleased at the results of a recent test where a 4.5-metre-high brick wall was put through a simulated magnitude seven quake.

The wall, restrained at the top and bottom and representative of many old B.C. schools, showed Ventura and fellow researchers the stability of such a structure in a strong earthquake. The results will help them find ways to strengthen B.C.’s large inventory of unreinforced brick schools in an economical fashion, Ventura told Maclean’s Magazine.