UBC Reports | Vol. 52 | No. 9 | Sep. 12, 2006

In the News

Highlights of UBC Media Coverage in August 2006

UBC-Led Team Uncovers Faintest Stars Ever

Scores of international media, including the British Broadcasting Corporation, United Press International, Canadian Press, National Post and Globe and Mail, reported on a discovery by a UBC-led team of astronomers of the dimmest stars ever seen in a globular star cluster, a feat expected to yield insights into the stars’ age, origin and evolution.

Globular clusters are concentrations of hundreds of thousands of stars. Using NASA’s Hubble telescope, the researchers focused on one of the closest clusters to Earth, known as NGC 6397. By calculating the mass of the faintest ancient stars, researchers can now work out the minimum mass needed for a star to survive.

“The light from these faint stars is so dim that it is equivalent to that produced by a birthday candle on the Moon, as seen from Earth,” said UBC’s Harvey Richer, lead researcher of the study.

UBC Expert Proposes Bold Shift in Fight Against AIDS

Dr. Julio Montaner, Director of the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS and new president of the International AIDS Society, features prominently in international and national media coverage of August’s International AIDS Conference in Toronto.

In a special HIV/AIDS edition of the U.K.–based medical journal The Lancet, reported on by China’s People’s Daily Online, New Zealand’s Stuff, CTV, CBC, Globe and Mail, Maclean’s and Canadian Press, Montaner argues that treating everyone infected with HIV could dramatically reduce the number of new infections in the world, effectively creating a chemical quarantine around the virus that causes AIDS.

Quarter Century Club

A total of 46 UBC faculty members will be recognized at this year’s Quarter Century Club annual dinner on Oct. 4.

Established in 1996 by then President David Strangway, the Quarter Century Club recognizes full-time faculty members and librarians with 25 years of service. In addition to the Quarter Century Club inductees, this year’s dinner will also honour 14 faculty members and librarians who have worked at UBC for 35 years. In 2003, the club began recognizing these active members, known collectively as Tempus Fugit, or “time flies.”

For information: www.ceremonies.ubc.ca/qcc.