“Vanish is a research system designed to give users control over the lifetime of personal data stored on the web or in the cloud. Specifically, all copies of Vanish encrypted data — even archived or cached copies — will become permanently unreadable at a specific time, without any action on the part of the user or any third party or centralized service.”

“For example, using the Firefox Vanish plugin, a user can create an email, a Google Doc document, a Facebook message, or a blog comment — specifying that the document or message should “vanish” in 8 hours. Before that 8-hour timeout expires, anyone who has access to the data can read it; however after that timer expires, nobody can read that web content — not the user, not Google, not Facebook, not a hacker who breaks into the cloud service, and not even someone who obtains a warrant for that data. That data — regardless of where stored or archived prior to the timeout — simply self-destructs and becomes permanently unreadable.”

For more information, visit the Vanish site at the Department of Computer Science, University of Washington.

There is a also a technical paper that will be presented at the 18th USENIX Security Symposium taking place this August in Montreal.

Submitted by Kevin Lindstrom Liaison Librarian for Electrical and Computer Engineering

The Niels Bohr Library and Archives of the American Institute of Physics holds more than a thousand tape-recorded interviews. Many of the oral history interview transcripts are now online. The interviews, conducted by the staff of the AIP Center for History of Physics and many other historians, offer unique insights into the lives, works, and personalities of modern scientists.

For more information, go to Niels Bohr Library & Archives

Submitted by Kevin Lindstrom Liaison Librarian for Physics and Astronomy at the University of British Columbia.

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

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

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

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.

Canada Excellence Research Chairs – Phase 1 Competition Results

Overview
In 2008, the Government of Canada created a new permanent program to establish 20 prestigious research chairs–Canada Excellence Research Chairs (CERC)–in universities across the country. The CERC program invests $28 million a year to attract and retain the world’s most accomplished and promising minds and help Canada build a critical mass of expertise in the priority research areas of environmental sciences and technologies, natural resources and energy, health and related life sciences and technologies, and information and communication technologies.

Phase 1 Competition Results

The following 17 universities have been invited to compete in Phase 2.

Universities invited to Phase 2 competition
(Number of successful proposals arranged from West to East)

* University of British Columbia (4)
* University of Alberta (5)
* University of Calgary (1)
* University of Saskatchewan (1)
* University of Manitoba (1)
* University of Toronto (5)
* University of Waterloo (4)
* McMaster University (2)
* Queen’s University (1)
* University of Western Ontario (2)
* University of Ottawa (2)
* McGill University (4)
* Université Laval (3)
* Université de Sherbrooke (1)
* Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (1)
* University of Prince Edward Island (1)
* Dalhousie University (2)

Click here for a list of the successful proposals

Submitted by Kevin Lindstrom Liaison Librarian

Giving the green light for BC small hydro: independent power producers are taking up the challenge to develop British Columbia’s plentiful supplies of small hydro. Suzanne Pritchard reports. International Water Power & Dam Construction, Dec 2008 v60 i12 p40(2)

“Well known for its mountainous topography and abundant rainfall, the coastal regions of British Columbia can have more than 4m of rainfall per year. In addition, the province’s sheer size, run-off from snow melt and thousands of creek reaches mean it is also ideally suited for run-of-river hydro power. ‘There is phenomenal potential for small hydro here,’ says Mike Wise, vice chair of the hydro committee for the Independent Power Producers Association of British Columbia (IPPBC). ‘The hydro sites are just fantastic.'”

“Beyond British Columbia’s ideal geographic setting for hydro power is the unique ‘green’ design of the run-of-river projects. ‘This design is very different to hydro projects almost anywhere in the world. It is the sole reason why we are judged to have the lowest environmental impact,’ says Steve Davis, president of the IPPBC.

“‘We do not have big storage reservoirs,’ says Davis. ‘In fact, typical headpond is only the size of a soccer field. While most others have short, thick pipes in tall concrete dams, our projects have long, narrow steep pipes and low rubber weirs. Our glaciated hanging valleys and alpine lakes enable us to locate the projects above a natural fish barrier and still get lots of head. So unlike most other hydro projects we are able to avoid directly impacting fish habitat.'”

Want to be familiarize yourself with run of river research both in terms of both the environmental and engineering aspects? What are the issues? Want to separate the hype from the reality?

The following databases will gave you access to international research dealing with run of river power generation:

• ASFA Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts
• Geobase
• Compendex

ASFA and Geobase will give you access to environmental and fisheries related research. Compendex is excellent for the engineering side of run of river power generation.

Submitted by Kevin Lindstrom Liaison Librarian for Earth and Ocean Sciences

Glacier change in western North America: Influences on hydrology, geomorphic hazards and water quality. Moore, R.D.; Fleming, S.W.; Menounos, B.; Wheate, R.; Fountain, A.; Stahl, K.; Holm, K.; Jakob, M. Hydrological Processes Volume 23, issue 1, p 42-61, 2009.
The glaciers of western Canada and the conterminous United States have dominantly retreated since the end of the Little Ice Age (LIA) in the nineteenth century, although average rates of retreat varied from strong in the first-half of the twentieth century, with glaciers stabilizing or even advancing until 1980, and then resuming consistent recession. This retreat has been accompanied by statistically detectable declines in late-summer streamflow from glacier-fed catchments over much of the study area, although there is some geographical variation: over recent decades, glaciers in northwest BC and southwest Yukon have lost mass dominantly by thinning with relatively low rates of terminal retreat, and glacier-fed streams in that region have experienced increasing flows. In many valleys, glacier retreat has produced geomorphic hazards, including outburst floods from moraine-dammed lakes, mass failures from oversteepened valley walls and debris flows generated on moraines. In addition to these hydrologic and geomorphic changes, evidence is presented that glacier retreat will result in higher stream temperatures, possibly transient increases in suspended sediment fluxes and concentrations, and changes in water chemistry. With climate projected to continue warming over the twenty-first century, current trends in hydrology, geomorphology and water quality should continue, with a range of implications for water resources availability and management and hydroecology, particularly for cool and cold-water species such as salmonids.

Volume 23 Issue 1 of the the journal Hydrological Processes is a Special Issue looking at the Hydrologic Effects of a Shrinking Cryosphere.

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

Imagine no facebook, twitter, myspace, email, internet for a entire day?

Shutdown Day is a Global Internet Experiment whose purpose is to get people to think about how their lives have changed with the increasing use of the home computer, and whether or not any good things are being lost because of this.

The idea of Shutdown Day project is simple – just shutdown your computer for one whole day of the year and involve yourself in some other activities: outdoors, nature, sports, fun stuff with friends and family – whatever, just to remind yourself that there still exists a world outside your monitor screen.

For more information, go to Shutdown Day

Submitted by Kevin Lindstrom Science and Engineering Liaison Librarian