The following presentations including audio and visual when available are now online from cIRcle, the UBC Library’s digital repository.

• Building an organization that can build a quantum computer Rose, Geordie
• The Dark Side of the Universe Van Waerbeke, Ludovic
• Frontiers in Nuclear Theory: From Light Nuclei to Astrophysics Bacca, Sonia
• Identifying, measuring, and teaching physics expertise Wieman, Carl
• Snowflakes, Stress and Semiconductors: Do You See a Pattern Here? Taylor, Richard

Submitted by Kevin Lindstrom Liaison Librarian for Physics and Astronomy

Thomson Reuters’ owned ScienceWatch.com has recently released the figures for “Top 20 Countries in Engineering“.

…is a listing of the top 20 countries which, as of the latest bimonthly update of Essential Science Indicators^SM, attracted the highest total citations to their papers published in Thomson Reuters-indexed journals of Engineering over an 11-year period, (1998-December 31, 2008). These countries are of a pool of 96 countries comprising the top 50% ranked by total citation count in this field.

It is great to see Canada as #7 with 4.39 citations per paper!

** Photo by tim_d

In celebration of the International Year of Astronomy in 2009, New Scientist takes you on an armchair tour of some of the most important telescopes ever built – http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/dn16663-important-telescopes

UBC Library owns dozens of books on telescopes. See some of them here- Telescopes.

** Photo by Space Ritual

The 11th Annual Meeting has come to Vancouver. Running from May 14 – May 16th, this annual meeting attracts physicists from the Pacific Northwest including Alberta.

Topics range from Finding and Characterizing Extrasolar Planets to relativistic non-instantaneous action-at-a-distance interactions.

For more information, go to the APS Northwest Chapter website.

Friday’s morning Welcome and Plenary Session were recorded and will be available online shortly from cIRcle

Submitted by Kevin Lindstrom Liaison Librarian for Physics and Astronomy

Books 24×7 can now be accessed by UBCcard Barcode and PIN. Find the title in the catalogue, click on the “Online Access” under the title and sign in.

“OK, it’s easier,” you say. “But I’ve used Books 24×7 before. Where’s my saved ebooks?” Ay, there’s the rub. In testing, saved ebooks came across under the new log-in. In reality, they didn’t.

However, you can still access them through your old account. After you find a title in the Library catalogue, click on the “Alternate Online Access” at the BOTTOM of the page – OR – go to our Books 24×7 Info Page and log in through “old account” using your old Username and Password.

You can see all nearly 7,500 online books we buy from Books24x7 in our catalogue here, or search for Books24x7 EBook Collection as an author in our catalogue…

*NOTE: We are only allowed nine (9) users at one time. Therefore, the resource times-out after 15 minutes of inactivity.

** Photo by gaspi

Statistics isn’t just about bayesian disease mapping and analyzing incomplete multivariate data. Statistics has some very important applications for analyzing hockey – yes, ice hockey. While my team hasn’t made the playoffs for a while except for that glorious 2006 run, it might be interesting to for any of you hockey statisticians to apply the research to the teams currently playing in the NHL playoffs.

Here’s a sample of some the articles available in MathSciNet and Current Index to Statistics dealing with ice hockey.

Thomas, Andrew C. (2007) “Inter-arrival Times of Goals in Ice Hockey,” Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports: Volume 3: Issue 3, Article 5. Available at: http://www.bepress.com/jqas/vol3/iss3/5

Thomas, Andrew C. (2006) “The Impact of Puck Possession and Location on Ice Hockey Strategy,” Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports: Volume 2: Issue 1, Article 6. Available at: http://www.bepress.com/jqas/vol2/iss1/6

Anthology of Statistics in Sports. Edited by Jim Albert, Jay Bennett and James J. Cochran. ASA-SIAM Series on Statistics and Applied Probability, 16. 2005.

Gill, Paramjit S. (2000) “Late-Game Reversals in Professional Basketball, Football, and Hockey” The American Statistician, Volume 54, Number 2 (May, 2000), pp. 94-99 http://www.jstor.org/stable/2686024

The Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports is a great place to browse.

Submitted by Kevin Lindstrom UBC Science and Engineering Librarian

Maclean’s has featured an article last week on geoengineering – http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/04/22/plan-b-for-global-warming/

The article focused on work of David Keith from UofC. His main article on geoengineering – “Geoengineering the climate: History and prospect” can be found here (in full text PDF for UBC folks)
A quick search in Web of Science database shows that every year there are twice as many article on this topic than a previous year…

Here are some folks in UBC Applied Sciences that work in this area

** Photo by freedryk

The following 2009 Earth and Ocean Science undergraduate honours theses are available online from cIRcle – UBC Library’s Digital Repository.

• The Diamond Potential of the Tuwawi Kimberlite (Baffin Island, Nunavut). Cross, Jodi
• A pre-feasibility study to assess the potential of Open Loop Ground Source Heat to heat and cool the proposed Earth Science Systems Building at the University of British Columbia Parajulee, Abha; Smet, Kim
• Nature and Origin of Gold-Rich Carbonate Replacement Deposits at the Rau Occurrence, Central Yukon Kingston, Scott P.
• Flow Modeling of a Syncrude North East In-Pit Hummock for the Sandhill Fen in Fort McMurray, Alberta Preston, Ryan
• Asymmetrical Subsidence Resulting from Material & Fluid Extraction Martz, Patrick
• Permeability of Limestone-Dolomite Composite Fracture Surfaces Van de Reep, Peter John
• Humidity Cell Investigation of Particle Size Effects on Weather Rates of Mine Waste Rock from the Antamina Mine, Peru. Yu, Emily
• Relationships between Geology, Ore-body Genesis, and Rock Mass Characteristics in Block Caving Mines Banks, Craig
• Foundation Design of a Shoppers Drug Mart in Squamish, B.C. To, Martin Ho-Nang
• Uranium-Lead Geochronology of Granophyres from the Archean Stillwater Complex, Montana USA)
  Corey J.

• Understanding Geological Time: A Proposed Assessment Mechanism for Beginner and Advanced Geology Students at the University of British Columbia, (Vancouver) Rhajiak, Jamil Ahmed Nizam

Submitted by Kevin Lindstrom Liaison Librarian for Earth and Ocean Sciences.