The Scene

 Rachel Baitz was the lucky winner of the 2013 Range Rover Evoque, one of the main prizes in Intracorp's recent contest promoting River Park Place, a sophisticated new condo development in Richmond's Oval Village. The Vancouver Observer helped to get the word out to our readers, so thanks to everyone who entered.

Sign up for Vancouver Observer's newsletter and follow @VanObserver on Twitter for a chance to win other valuable prizes, and maybe next time, it'll be you driving off into the beautiful Vancouver sunset in your new hot ride.

Vertality 3 was an evening of great green fun: drinks, dance, great music and networking galore with all of Vancouver's greatest sustainable and socially conscious businesses. Here are the photos to recap one of Vancouver's must-go annual parties. 

University of British Columbia researchers have successfully normalized the production of blood vessels in the brain of mice with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) by immunizing them with amyloid beta, a protein widely associated with the disease.

While AD is typically characterized by a build-up of plaques in the brain, recent research by the UBC team showed a near doubling of blood vessels in the brain of mice and humans with AD.

The new study, published online last week in Scientific Reports, a Nature journal, shows a reduction of brain capillaries in mice immunized with amyloid beta – a phenomenon subsequently corroborated by human clinical data – as well as a reduction of plaque build-up.

With people now able to buy things with a tweet, and Apple poised to push their mobile devices as electronic wallets, cash is set to take a serious demotion from its position as king.

A recent study from the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business now shows that not only is cash becoming increasingly redundant, but governments could save big by  axing currency all together.

Even after accounting for revenue gained by printing money (a value referred to as seigniorage) the study by Sauder finance professor Maurice Levi suggests the Canadian government could save an amount equal to 50 per cent of the country’s 2011 fiscal deficit, if cash were cut. He says similar savings would be found in other western countries.


Eliminating cash could mean huge savings for governments, says Sauder School of Business Prof. Maurice Levi. Mark Mushet Photograph