PRO/UAW, the union that tried and failed in 2006 to organize the postdocs on the 10 University of California (UC) campuses, has received official notification that it succeeded on its second try. On 19 August, the California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) faxed a letter to the organizers stating that the union, known formally as Postdoctoral Researchers Organize/International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, had submitted valid signatures from a majority of the approximately 5000 UC postdocs eligible to petition for union representation. Under state law, unionization is therefore automatic. The move brings an estimated 10% of U.S. postdocs into UAW, an AFL-CIO-affiliated national union that represents more than a million other members, including UC academic employees, such as graders, teaching assistants, and lecturers.

Read the full article at here

Submitted by kevin lindstrom Science and Engineering Liaison Librarian

Carbon nanotube research is going on at a number of UBC departments including Electrical and Computer Engineering, Chemistry, and Physics and Astronomy.

Electrical and Computer Engineering
Mirfakhrai, Tissaphern; Kozlov, Mikhail; Fang, Shaoli; Zhang, Mei; Baughman, Ray H.; Madden, John D. Carbon nanotube yarns: sensors, actuators, and current carriers. Proceedings of SPIE (2008), 6927.
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have attracted extensive attention in the past few years because of their appealing mechanical and electronic properties. Yarns made through spinning multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) have been reported. Here we report the application of these yarns as electrochemical actuators, force sensors and microwires. When extra charge is stored in the yarns, change in length. This actuation is thought to be because of electrostatic as well as quantum chemical effects in the nanotube backbones. We report strains up to 0.7 %. At the same time, the charged yarns can respond to a change in the applied tension by generating a current or a potential difference that is related to the applied tension force. As current carriers, the yarns offer a conductivity of [similar to] 300 S/cm, which increases linearly with temperature. We report a current capacity of more than 108 A/m2, which is comparable to those of macroscopic metal wires. However, these nanotube yarns have a density (0.8 g/cm3) that is an order of magnitude lower than metallic wires. The MWNT yarns are mechanically strong with tensile strengths reaching 700 MPa. These properties together make them a candidate material for use in many applications including sensors, actuators and light-weight current carriers.

Chemistry
Adsorption of small gas molecules onto Pt-doped single-walled carbon nanotubes
Author(s): Yeung CS (Yeung, Charles See), Liu LV (Liu, Lei Vincent), Wang YA (Wang, Yan Alexander)
Source: JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY C Volume: 112 Issue: 19 Pages: 7401-7411 Published: MAY 15 2008
Abstract: The adsorption of small gaseous molecules to the metal center in Pt-doped (5,5) single-walled carbon nanotubes has been explored within density functional theory. A model system consisting of a single Pt atom residing in the middle of a carbon nanotube with capping H atoms is used for our investigation. For all gases studied, the overall process of adsorption was found to be exothermic, where the affinity strongly depended on the orientation of the molecule. By examining the density of states and molecular orbitals of these nanotube-adsorbate complexes in comparison to the bare Pt-doped nanotube, we show that the electronic structure of these materials is strongly influenced by the presence of gases. Hence, we propose an application of Pt-doped single-walled carbon nanotubes as gas sensors and hope to motivate experimental work in this field.

Physics
Pereira RG , Laflorencie N, Affleck I, Halperin BI. PHYSICAL REVIEW B 77 12 125327 2008
Abstract: We propose that the finite size of the Kondo screening cloud, xi(K), can be probed by measuring the charge quantization in a one-dimensional system coupled to a small quantum dot. When the chemical potential mu in the system is varied at zero temperature, one should observe charge steps whose locations are at values of mu that are controlled by the Kondo effect when the system size L is comparable to xi(K). We show that, if the standard Kondo model is used, the ratio between the widths of the Coulomb blockade valleys with odd or even number of electrons is a universal scaling function of xi(K)/L. If we take into account electron-electron interactions in a single-channel wire, this ratio also depends on the parameters of the effective Luttinger model; in addition, the scaling is weakly violated by a marginal bulk interaction. For the geometry of a quantum dot embedded in a ring, we show that the dependence of the charge steps on a magnetic flux through the ring is controlled by the size of the Kondo screening cloud.

Submitted by kevin.lindstrom Liaison Librarian for the Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Chemistry, and Physics.

New CMA Report Warns Poor Air Quality Killing Canadians

OTTAWA, August 13, 2008 – The Canadian Medical Association released staggering new data today showing that this year alone as many as 21,000 Canadians will die prematurely from the effects of air pollution. While most of those deaths will be due to chronic exposure over a number of years, almost 3,000 will be the result of acute, short-term exposure.

The CMA’s report entitled No Breathing Room: National Illness Costs of Air Pollution, shows the effects of poor air quality based on the concentrations of two highly predictive pollutants – ozone and particulate matter – on four distinct age groups of Canadians.

“With the start of the Olympics in Beijing, much has been made about the poor air quality in China and the effect it is having on our athletes,” said CMA President Dr. Brian Day. “But we have a serious home-grown pollution problem right here and Canadians, ranging from the very young to the very old, are paying the price.”

Specific findings of the No Breathing Room: National Illness Costs of Air Pollution report include:

* By 2031, almost 90,000 Canadians will have died from the acute short-term effects of air pollution. The number of deaths, due to long-term exposure, will be over 700,000 – the population of Quebec City.
* In 2008, 80% of those who die due to air pollution will be over age 65.
* In 2008, 25 Canadians under age 19 will die of the effects of short-term exposure to air pollution.
* Ontario and Quebec residents are the worst hit Canadians, with 70% of the premature deaths occurring in Central Canada, even though these two provinces comprise only 62% of Canada’s population.
* In 2008 there will be over 9,000 hospital visits, 30,000 emergency department visits and 620,000 doctor’s office visits due to air pollution.
* The economic costs of air pollution in 2008 will top $8 billion. By 2031, they will have accumulated to over $250 billion.

“This report shows for the first time the tragic effects of the toxic air that we breathe, whether it is in my hometown of Vancouver, or across the country in St. John’s,” added Dr. Day.

No Breathing Room: National Illness Costs of Air Pollution used a software model first developed by the Ontario Medical Association and provides detailed health and economic data relating to changes in air quality. The study uses the best available knowledge and data on air quality, human health and economics to produce accurate forecasts of health impacts and expected costs related to changes in air quality. The tool has also been validated by a panel of international experts on health and the environment.

The full report, including provincial data and tables, is available at www.cma.ca

Posted by Kevin Lindstrom Liaison Librarian for Earth and Ocean Sciences

By Katherine McAlpine and a few more folks @ CERN.

They do a very nice and concise Rap explanation what LHC does – I loved it…Please see it below 🙂

CERN Rap from Will Barras on Vimeo.

On 4 July 2008 Science had an editorial about peer-review process.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/321/5885/15

Written by the Science editors, including Bruce Alberts – the Editor-in-Chief, it is indeed an interesting read! Have a look..

** Photo by selva

On June 15, 2008 Thomson Reuters ISI has published a short report about Canadian Science. Canada’s world share of science and social-science papers over the last five years is expressed as a percentage of papers in each of 22 fields in the Thomson Reuters ISI database. Also, Canada’s relative citation impact compared to the world average in each field, in percentage terms.

http://sciencewatch.com/dr/sci/08/jun15-08_2/

It is a very interesting read that shows that Canadians scientists are most prominent in Psychology/Psychiatry and Ecology/Environmental and least prominent in Chemistry and Physics. Frankly, the whole thing surprised me very much!

What do you see in this report? Does it surprise you?

** Photo by jmv

CNN runs an article today about the CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.

The article raises some fears that the Large Hadron Collider could exceed physicists’ wildest conjectures: Will it spawn a black hole that could swallow Earth? Or spit out particles that could turn the planet into a hot dead clump?

The article tries to answer those questions with CERN and other physicists. A very nice read – here is the full text – http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/06/30/doomsdaycollider.ap/index.html

The comments are open for any UBC folks that are willing to address this issue 🙂 After all, we have our own system here at UBC – at TRIUMF…

Thanks to Anne Miele for the link.

** Photo by Image Editor

Rube Goldberg machine is a deliberately complicated apparatus that performs a very simple task in very indirect and convoluted fashion.

Many engineering schools have Rube Goldberg machine contests – see Purdue University site or University of Wisconsin Milwaukee site

I particularly like this Honda ad below that uses the Rube Goldberg machine principle 🙂

** Thanks to Sheryl Adam for the tip

Here is another podcast we recorded back in April 2008. It is presented by Prof. Mark Halpern, from the UBC Physics and Astronomy Department.

Here is the abstract for this presentation:

The universe is filled with a thermal glow called the cosmic microwave background that comes from the hot plasma which filled it early on. Measurements of this background made by the NASA satellite WMAP have determined the age, geometry and composition of the universe with new precision, determining that the universe today is dominated by a dark energy that is causing it to expand ever more rapidly. The mission has also determined that baryonic matter–the atoms and molecules we see around us–only form a few percent of the total energy density of the universe today, and has determined the epoch at which the first stars formed. Recent results give a tantalizing picture of the first very small fraction of a second in the “big bang”. Six years after its launch WMAP remains healthy and the data continue to pour in. This talk will explain to a general audience what this experiment tells us about how the universe began and what it is made out of.

Here is the audio file – Measuring how the universe began

Here you can also find the PDF file of the presentation and the movie that Prof. Halpern demonstrated – https://circle.ubc.ca/handle/2429/660

** Photo by makelessnoise

UBC Department of Physics and Astronomy professor Dr. Ian Affleck has been recognized by the American Physical Society’s as one of their Outstanding Referees.

“The Outstanding Referee program was instituted in 2008. The highly selective award program recognizes scientists who have been exceptionally helpful in assessing manuscripts for publication in the APS journals. The program will annually recognize approximately 130 of the 42,000 currently active referees, but in the inaugural year a larger group of 534 referees has been selected for the Outstanding Referee designation. Like Fellowship in the APS, this is a lifetime award. By initiating the program, APS expresses its appreciation to all referees, whose efforts in peer review not only keep the standards of the journals at a high level, but in many cases also help authors to improve the quality and readability of their articles—even those that are not published by APS.”

Click here to read the full article.