An organization knows what the people who make it up know. What differentiates one university from another are its professors. The fundamental role of training for the development and growth of individuals, organizations, and society as a whole is indisputable. A student is trained at an individual level with the expectation of a better job […] … learn more→

Americans age 60 and older lost more than US$3 billion to scammers in 2023, according to the FBI. To put that whopping figure in context, Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour recently made news as the first concert tour ever to earn $1 billion. As a geriatrician – a doctor who cares for people over 65 years of age – I […] … learn more→

When we talk about artificial intelligence (AI) we must orient ourselves rigorously from the foundations of the sciences that support it. In other words, we should never rely on artificially generated expectations around new products that they try to sell us, as well as on the tremendous advertising hyperbole ( hype ) that sweeps all media. Exaggerated claims about its successes […] … learn more→

In addition to being beneficial for our body, physical activity also plays a crucial, often unsuspected, role in the development and modification of our brain. Through the birth of new neurons (neurogenesis) and the creation of connections between neurons (synaptogenesis) and blood vessels which improve blood circulation to the brain (angiogenesis), physical activity sculpts the […] … learn more→

On a dreary winter evening in a university building basement in March 2015, I stood before some 100 students for a dialogue on the conflict in the Middle East. University of British Columbia (UBC) undergraduates were voting in a referendum to decide whether their student union should boycott products and divest from companies that support Israel’s occupation […] … learn more→

Time and again, leading scientists, technologists, and philosophers have made spectacularly terrible guesses about the direction of innovation. Even Einstein was not immune, claiming, “There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable,” just ten years before Enrico Fermi completed construction of the first fission reactor in Chicago. Shortly thereafter, the consensus switched to fears […] … learn more→

Let’s imagine that an 18-year-old student writes the following sentence on his university entrance exam: “The text does not demonstrate an exhaustive analysis of the problem.” How should having written those misspelled lines affect your final grade? Should we only measure the level of their knowledge, or their ability to transmit it in writing in […] … learn more→

Claim is a difficult word. Dictionaries offer Meaning One –  claims are assertions that something is true, that something is a fact, but there is no proof or evidence. We just have to take the claim at face value and as being ‘right’, or not. Dictionaries also offer Meaning Two. A claim is a statement or action […] … learn more→

The morning started with a message from a friend: “I used your photos to train my local version of Midjourney. I hope you don’t mind”, followed up with generated pictures of me wearing a flirty steampunk costume. I did in fact mind. I felt violated. Wouldn’t you? I bet Taylor Swift did when deepfakes of her […] … learn more→

Have we invented reality? Is it just the fruit of the human brain? There is a current, based on quantum physics, that insists on removing reality from reality. The proposal is this: If a tree dies, to give an example, it will be dead no matter who observes it, and we can have empirical proof that it […] … learn more→