The contest, introduced this year by Dean Tyseer Aboulnasr, challenged Engineering students to share their sense of pride in their UBC experience and reflect the fun they have here.

Here is the winning video, by Paul Milaire (3rd year MECH) –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szGMS6LIbkM

See all UBC engineering videos here – https://www.youtube.com/ubcengineering

It is a very good news to us in the Science and Engineering library to hear that Richard Kerekes is to receive the 2010 TAPPI Gunnar Nicholson Gold Medal Award.

From the UBC Applied Science press release:

The award recognizes an individual who has created a pre-eminent scientific and engineering achievement that has proven of commercial benefit to the world’s pulp, paper, board and forest products industries.

“Dr. Kerekes’ contributions to research, technology and education for our industry over a 38-year period are exemplary and make him a deserving recipient for TAPPI’s highest honor,” said Larry N. Montague, President of TAPPI. “He has made numerous significant contributions to papermaking technology during his career, including founding the Pulp and Paper Centre at The University of British Columbia where he established a research program between UBC and Paprican.”

“To a remarkable degree, he has contributed to most all of the unit operations in papermaking, from stock chests to calenders,” said Gary A. Baum, 2009 Gunnar Nicholson Gold Medal Winner, who nominated Kerekes for the award. “His research has been characterized by a blend of solid science and the application of fundamental principles to the solution of practical problems.”

To see some of Prof. Kerekes publications in the Web of Science database (around 70 articles) , please use this search:

Subject Heading=(MULTIDISCIPLINARY SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY OR PHYSICAL SCIENCES) AND Author=(KEREKES R*) AND Institution=(UNIV BRITISH COLUMBIA OR PULP PAPER RES INST CANADA OR PAPRICAN)

The earliest article dates back to 1974 and the newest was published last year.

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

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…

The BBC has reported last week about scientists in Italy making artificial replacement bones out of wood – http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8438209.stm

A quick search in the Compendex database shows dozens and dozens of research reports of using wood as a possible implant material.

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

Every year the Chemical Abstracts Service of the American Chemical Society publishes a wonderful calendar – the Colors of Chemistry. Starting in 2010 this calendar is now available either as a free download or as an online interactive calendar.

Go to 2010 Colors of Chemistry Calendar and choose your option.

Submitted by Kevin Lindstrom Liaison Librarian for Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the University of British Columbia.

There are currently two very useful journal rankings SCImago and JCR. These rankings allow you to display amongst other things the h-index for a specific journal or a grouping of journals based on subject

“The SCImago Journal & Country Rank is a portal that includes the journals and country scientific indicators developed from the information contained in the Scopus® database (Elsevier B.V.).” Scopus contains more than 15,000 journals from over 4,000 international publishers as well as over 1000 open access journals. There are also over 500 conference proceedings in the database.

For more information, go to SCImago

“Journal Citation Reports® is a comprehensive and unique resource that allows you to evaluate and compare journals using citation data drawn from over 7,500 scholarly and technical journals from more than 3,300 publishers in over 60 countries.”
JCR Science Edition contains data from over 5,900 journals in science and technology.
JCR Social Sciences Edition contains data from over 1,700 journals in the social sciences.

For more information, go to JCR (Journal Citation Reports)

It is important to be aware of the size of the body of literature (the number of journals and conference proceedings) being indexed in Scopus and Web of Science. Journals listed in JCR are indexed in the Web of Science The larger the database, the greater the possibility that articles will be discovered, read, and hopefully cited. This is especially important for open access journals, some of which have not yet been indexed in the Web of Science.

Eigenfactor ranking is based on Web of Science data.

Submitted by Kevin Lindstrom Liaison Librarian for Science and Engineering

NYT today has an article on an issue of great importance to all science disciplines – data management. The article – “A Deluge of Data Shapes a New Era in Computing” overviews the new book published by Microsoft researchers – “The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery.”

The book is available in full text from Microsoft here – http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/collaboration/fourthparadigm/4th_paradigm_book_complete_lr.pdf

This is a hot issue in science libraries too, as we are trying to understand how to deal with the vast amounts of digital data and whether libraries have a role to play to support, maintain and archive some of this data…

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

Ron Simmer Patent and IP Expert has once agained issued his Patex Bizarre Patents Calendar.

This calendar documents the creative spirt of the human race reflected in patents.

Check out Ron’s excellent site of patent and intellectual property links at the Patex website.

Submitted by Kevin Lindstrom Science and Engineering Liaison Librarian

Sociologist Joseph Hermanowicz’ new book Lives in Science How Institutions Affect Academic Careers describes how the prestige of academic institutions often shapes the career of the individual.

“For all but a handful of the scientists he studies, the prestige of their institution pretty much determines their professional–and even their personal–destiny. Of the more than 4000 institutions of higher learning in the United States where a scientist can get a faculty post–ranging from world-renowned research universities to local community colleges–only a very limited number possess the resources, reputation, and connections needed for research careers at the highest levels of recognition.”

Click here for a full review of Hermanowicz’ book.

Submitted by Kevin Lindstrom Physical Sciences and Engineering Liaison Librarian