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

Interested in photography and rocketry and have a GPS enabled cell phone laying around?

Have a look at how the MIT 1337arts crew pulled it off.

Submitted by Kevin Lindstrom Liaison Librarian for ECE and EOS at the University of British Columbia

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.

A very recent article on PLoS One is worth the read –

Bollen J, Van de Sompel H, Hagberg A, Chute R, 2009 A Principal Component Analysis of 39 Scientific Impact Measures. PLoS ONE 4(6): e6022. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0006022

Abstract:

Background

The impact of scientific publications has traditionally been expressed in terms of citation counts. However, scientific activity has moved online over the past decade. To better capture scientific impact in the digital era, a variety of new impact measures has been proposed on the basis of social network analysis and usage log data. Here we investigate how these new measures relate to each other, and how accurately and completely they express scientific impact.

Methodology

We performed a principal component analysis of the rankings produced by 39 existing and proposed measures of scholarly impact that were calculated on the basis of both citation and usage log data.

Conclusions

Our results indicate that the notion of scientific impact is a multi-dimensional construct that can not be adequately measured by any single indicator, although some measures are more suitable than others. The commonly used citation Impact Factor is not positioned at the core of this construct, but at its periphery, and should thus be used with caution.

Frankly,  I was surprised by the authors’ conclusion, particularly with this piece: “Our results indicate that the JIF and SJR express a rather particular aspect of scientific impact that may not be at the core of the notion of scientific “impact”. Usage-based measures such as Usage Closeness centrality may in fact be better “consensus” measures.”

I am used to be inquired about Journal Impact Factor (JIF) so often in academia and know that it used for tenure consideration in many departments in UBC.

** photo by testone 22

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

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

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

Here are four podcasts we recorded for the first annual Open Access day on October 14.

https://circle.ubc.ca/handle/2429/2689//browse-title

See all our Science and Engineering podcasts here

** Photo by andyi.