This blog is created and (being) maintained by three Science and Engineering librarians at the University of British Columbia (UBC): Aleteia Greenwood, Kevin Lindstrom and Eugene Barsky.

The purpose and mandate of this blog is to serve as a communication tool for us to let our liaison departments know about the services we offer to them, workshops we teach, databases and electronic/print resources and also what happens worldwide that might be of relevance to us at UBC.

The information is parsed and granulated to relevant categories, so if you are interested in a specific category, click on it to see what we have to offer in that discipline or subject.

Please send any of your comments and suggestions our way – we would be delighted to hear from you!

Vancouver, BC, April 23, 2008 – BCNet puts on the Broadband Innovation Challenge to promote student innovation with respect to the use of high-bandwidth networks. At the 2008 Challenge, students from UBC’s Computer Science department took top prize in the graduate student category and 3 prizes in the undergraduate category.

In the graduate student portion of the competition Brendan Cully won 1st place for his application SecondSite. SecondSite uses a virtualization platform for seamless, efficient disaster recovery.

In the undergraduate category:
1st place went to Charles Bihis, Victor Chan, Jason Hui, and Andrew Tjia for a peer-to-peer picture sharing system called Picture2Picture. Their application improves on photo-sharing applications by cutting out the need for a central server and with it, a single-point of failure. Learn more at:
http://p2p.thecube.ca/home

There was a tie for 2nd place:
* Chris Binckly, Daniel Dent, and Ian South-Dickinson for their project on distributed content delivery and processing system;
* Tane Adam, Yanik Berube, and Taivo Evard for their project Ramet, a peer-to-peer backup system based on erasure codes. This team also got 3rd place in the poster competition.

More on UBC winners here:
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/news/press/BCNetCompetition2008.shtml

More on BCNet Broadband Innovation Challenge here:
http://www.bc.net/news_events_publications/competitions.htm

** Photo by Unhindered by Talent

“Canada at a glance” presents the current Canadian demographic, education, health, justice, housing, income, labour market, economic, travel, financial, and foreign trade statistics.

This booklet also includes important international comparisons, so that readers can see how Canada stacks up against its neighbours. Updated yearly, Canada at a glance is a very useful reference for those who want quick access to current Canadian statistics.

Access it in free full-text PDF on the Stats Canada website – “Canada at a glance”

** Photo by jpctalbot

The Open Atmospheric Science Journal is an open access, peer reviewed, online journal, which publishes research articles, reviews, and letters in all areas of climate research and atmospheric science. It aims to provide the most complete and reliable source of information on current developments in the field. The emphasis will be on publishing quality papers rapidly and freely available to researchers worldwide.

http://www.bentham.org/open/toascj/index.htm

UBC Professor Douw Steyn and Stefano Galmarini from European Commission Joint Research Centre have published “Evaluating the Predictive and Explanatory Value of Atmospheric Numerical Models: Between Relativism and Objectivism” in this new open access journal.

** Photo by selva

Here is a recent presentation by Dr. Harvey Richer. Here is an abstract:

White dwarf stars are the burnt out remnants that remain after a star like the Sun has completed its nuclear evolution. In such a star there are no remaining nuclear energy sources, so the star evolves by simply radiating its stored thermal energy out into space. This may seem rather uninteresting, but in fact there is a wealth of physical phenomena that occur during this part of a star’s life – from getting kicked at birth, to neutrino emission in early life, to some interesting high density physics, through to functioning as precise clocks that can provide an age for some of the oldest know stars in the Universe. Some of these phases will be illustrated with detailed observations taken recently with the Hubble Space Telescope.

Click here to play mp3 file and here to view to presentation slides.

Moreover, you can play the file using the small gadget below:

As of April 1, 2008, UBC Library supports an institutional membership to the Public Library of Science (PLOS). This membership entitles UBC authors to a 10% discount on article submission costs for PLOS journals.

We are listed as institutional members on the site which includes a link to UBC authored articles.

** Photo by selva

New Scientist has mentioned this article – “Ozone interactions with human hair: Ozone uptake rates and product formation” by Lakshmi S. Pandrangia and Glenn C. Morrison, scheduled to be published in Atmospheric Environment about how greasy hair may reduce the amount of ozone you breathe in.

Hmmm…..interesing, we have full text access to this article @ UBC. Go ahead and read if interested…

Tomorrow, March 18th we also offer another workshop titled “Mastering Science and Engineering Library Resources” for the Science and Engineering faculty, students and staff in Koerner 216 computer lab 11-12pm.

Here is the PDF of the handout, moreover, see it embedded below:

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We are presenting “Getting to know your library” workshop tomorrow (March 18th) in Koerner 216 computer lab 10-11am. This workshop introduces the library resources for Science and Engineering faculty, students and staff.

Please see the PDF (160KB) of the handout here or see it embedded in the blog below:

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