From UBC engineering folks…This work is the result of a collaborative effort between assistant professors Alireza Nojeh, nanotube expert, and Kenichi Takahata, micropatterning expert, of the department of electrical and computer engineering. The image was created by graduate student Masoud Dahmardeh with assistance from graduate students Parham Yaghoobi and Mohamed Sultan Mohamed Ali.

The area on which this image was created is smaller than a snowflake, yet it contains over 100 million carbon nanotubes. Nanotubes are not just tiny as their name suggests: Each is around 10 thousand times thinner than human hair and highly flexible. They also posses many other amazing properties: They are almost as light as air, better conductors of electricity and heat than copper, stronger than steel and tougher than diamond.

** Credit – http://www.apsc.ubc.ca/olympics.php#torch

Students and staff in UBC’s Centre for Advanced Wood Processing (CAWP) were given the task of creating all 23 Olympic and Paralympic wooden medal podia and the 100 wooden medal trays for the 2010 Winter Games. And yes, they delivered – http://www.cawp.ubc.ca/Whatwedo/CAWPProjects/tabid/3546/Default.aspx

** photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/tgillin/

BOULDER—Painting the roofs of buildings white has the potential to significantly cool cities and mitigate some impacts of global warming, a new study indicates. The new NCAR-led research suggests there may be merit to an idea advanced by U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu that white roofs can be an important tool to help society adjust to climate change.

Read the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) news release here. The full article published in Geophysical Research Letters can be read here.

Submitted by Kevin Lindstrom Liaison Librarian for Earth and Ocean Sciences

Dr. Vijay Bhargava is moving from his position as Editor in Chief of IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications to become IEEE Communications Society’s Director of Journals.

Read the full article here.

Submitted by Kevin Lindstrom Liaison Librarian for Electrical and Computer Engineering

EZproxy Unavailable – Thursday, Feb 4th, 2:00PM – 6:00PM

Because of the EZProxy work, Books 24×7 will have connection issues till possibly Friday morning. The “old” login (for anyone familiar with the blue screen) will work if you have a pre-existing account. The new will not. See the Library Information Page for your login options. Only “Alternate online access: Click here for the electronic version.” links will work in the catalog during this time.

Many thanks!

This is a very interesting list showing the the top 20 institutions which attracted the highest total citations to their papers published in Thomson Reuters-indexed Engineering journals. These institutions are the top 20 out of a pool of 1,084 institutions comprising the top 1% ranked by total citation count in this field.

Must read – http://sciencewatch.com/inter/ins/10/10febTOP20ENG/

No Canadian institutions in the top twenty list…