{"id":3731,"date":"2016-08-03T23:09:45","date_gmt":"2016-08-03T23:09:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/science\/?p=3731"},"modified":"2016-08-03T23:09:46","modified_gmt":"2016-08-03T23:09:46","slug":"liysf-day-8-specialist-study-day-british-council","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/science\/2016\/08\/03\/liysf-day-8-specialist-study-day-british-council\/","title":{"rendered":"LIYSF Day 8: Specialist Study Day & The British Council"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today at LIYSF 2016, we spent the entire day with particular specialists from\u00a0different fields of science. I chose to hear Professor Clare Elwell speak about\u00a0her work\u00a0on\u00a0near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS)\u00a0and\u00a0how it applies to\u00a0brain imaging. Professor Elwell was a student herself at LIYSF thirty two years ago! Now, she is a professor in Medical Physics at the\u00a0University College London. A talk at LIYSF thirty two years ago\u00a0opened her eyes to the area of medical phsyics\u00a0and\u00a0helped shape the beginning of her career. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Before the specialist study day began, I went for a light morning jog through\u00a0Kensington Gardens\u00a0with Grace and Sophie from New Zealand. Here is Kensington Palace, the official residence of William and Kate (and little George and Charlotte, too!) as well as Prince Harry and a few others.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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Here is the panel of speakers ready to introduce themselves. Although each specialist introduced themselves at the beginning, we split into our individual groups shortly after for a smaller group session with just one of the specialists.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n\n
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Professor Elwell presented a few graphs\u00a0produced by using\u00a0near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) as a brain imaging technique for infants. First, infants were shown inanimate objects on a screen, such as a train. During this time no strong response was picked up by the NIRS probes. However, when the screen changed to have a person playing itsy-bitsy spider, the attention of infants at low risk of autism spiked (the red upside down U-shape on the left graph), while it did not in the case of children with high risk of autism. This doesn’t\u00a0give you\u00a0a definitive diagnosis of autism, but rather reveals a higher risk of the condition.\u00a0Children at low risk for autism usually display this increase in attention when they recognize a\u00a0human.\u00a0<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n\n
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After our lecture, we had a few hours to put together a\u00a0short presentation to summarize the lecture. This was quite the challenge, as we had around fifty people in our group! Three girls from Cyprus made the “brain imaging hats” to represent the real imaging cap with probes that Professor Elwell and her team use. We made posters to help narrate our story, and in the end, all fifty people had contributed in some way. I played a mother\u00a0whose baby was\u00a0about to have their brain imaged with NIRS!<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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Here is one of\u00a0the creative groups in action presenting on the Subatomic Zoo of Elementary Particles.<\/span><\/p>\n

After a day of lectures and presentations, we had a quick dinner before\u00a0we headed back to the lecture hall for a\u00a0session by the British Council.\u00a0The three speakers described the work of the British Council and its role in science and education, and emphasized studying in the UK.\u00a0Although I am staying put in Canada for at least another six to ten years,\u00a0it was still interesting to hear about how\u00a0the UK is\u00a0investing in education and equipping both domestic and international students to succeed academically. <\/span><\/p>\n

I wrote copious amounts of notes today, and I hope I have a moment to go through them soon. Tomorrow holds our full day visits to either\u00a0Cambridge or Oxford, and I will be visiting Cambridge for the day. I am exited,\u00a0although the 6am wake up may be a challenge!<\/span><\/p>\n

– Vivienne<\/em><\/span> <\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today at LIYSF 2016, we spent the entire day with particular specialists from\u00a0different fields of science. I chose to hear Professor Clare Elwell speak about\u00a0her work\u00a0on\u00a0near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS)\u00a0and\u00a0how it applies to\u00a0brain imaging. Professor Elwell was a student herself at LIYSF thirty two years ago! Now, she is a professor in Medical Physics at the\u00a0University College … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":156,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[112,114],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trips","category-science-in-london"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/156"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3731"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3732,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3731\/revisions\/3732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/science\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}