The 262 new submissions received between Wednesday 1 Oct and Thursday 2 Oct, announced Friday 3 Oct 2008, brought the total number of articles on arXiv past 500,000 — all openly accessible.

There are also more than 200,000 old versions of articles which record all public revisions since 1997. If the linear increase in submission rate continues, arXiv will pass the one million article mark in 2015.

See press release for more details.

Submitted by Kevin Lindstrom Liaison Librarian for Physics and Astronomy

The International Year of Astronomy 2009 is a global effort initiated by the International Astronomical Union and UNESCO to help the citizens of the world rediscover their place in the Universe through the day- and night-time sky, and thereby engage a personal sense of wonder and discovery.

Check out the IYA2009 website for information about the initiative as well as additional resources and information on global IYA-sponsored projects.

Interested in Physics and Astronomy research here at UBC? Have a look at the Department of Physics Astronomy and Astrophysics website. Here you will find a full list of faculty and their areas of research.

Submitted by Kevin Lindstrom Liaison Librarian for Physics and Astronomy.

IEEE has approved six new publications for 2009.

IEEE Solid-State Circuits Magazine
IEEE Transactions on Autonomous Mental Development
IEEE/OSA Journal of Optical Communications and Networking
IEEE Photonics Journal
IEEE Embedded Systems Letters
IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games

Now, our faculty have even more venues to publish their research in!

Don’t forget that being a UBC faculty, student or staff you have FULL TEXT access to all IEEE publications 24*7 via the IEEE Xplore Digital Library

** Photo by Kevin Steele

The Knovel University Challenge is Back!

Enter to win a Wii, iPod Nano or Free Music starting on 9/29/08

Go to Knovel University Challenge for more information.

Posted by Kevin Lindstrom Liaison Librarian for Materials, Electrical and Computer, and Chemical Engineering

A great little article about some wotk done by Bruce Dunham and his colleagues is featured in UBC Reports last week – “Prof Improves Probability of Learning Stats”

Great to know that Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative (CWSEI) is involved!

** Photo by Martin Dee

Thought that chemical engineers dealt only with oil refineries and fluidized beds?

Dr. Savvas Hatzikiriakos has published a number of articles looking at the rheology of mozzarella cheese.

Rolling of mozzarella cheese: Experiments and simulations Journal of Food Engineering, In Press, Accepted Manuscript, Available online 12 September 2008. Evan Mitsoulis, Savvas G. Hatzikiriakos

Rheology of mozzarella cheese: Extrusion and rolling International Dairy Journal, Volume 18, Issue 6, June 2008, Pages 615-623. Edward B. Muliawan, Savvas G. Hatzikiriakos

Rheology of mozzarella cheese International Dairy Journal, Volume 17, Issue 9, September 2007, Pages 1063-1072. Edward B. Muliawan, Savvas G. Hatzikiriakos

Rheology is the science of the deformation and flow of matter. It is concerned with the response of materials to applied stress. That response may be irreversible viscous flow, reversible elastic deformation, or a combination of the two. Control of rheology is essential for the manufacture and handling of numerous materials and products, eg, foods, cosmetics, rubber, plastics, paints, inks, and drilling muds. Before control can be achieved, there must be an understanding of rheology and an ability to measure rheological properties. (Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology).

Dr. Savvas Hatzikiriakos’ other research involves the study of the rheological behavior of polymers.

Thermorheological properties of LLDPE/LDPE blends: Effects of production technology of LLDPE Journal of Polymer Science Part B: Polymer Physics. volume 46 issue 16 pages 1669-1683 2008. Delgadillo-Velázquez, O.; Hatzikiriakos, S.G.; Sentmanat, M.

Submitted by Kevin Lindstrom Liaison Librarian for Chemical and Biological Engineering and Materials Engineering

Over the last year, our national broadcaster – CBC came with a series of podcasts called “how to think about science”

Listen to all of them here – they are more than 20 episodes – http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/features/science/index.html

** Photo by estherase

We’ve got ebooks on almost any topic under the sun and pdf’s are a lot lighter to carry than paper.

You want books on how to write code in Python or how to fix your new laptop running Microsoft Vista? Have a look at the Books 24X7 IT Collection.

Trying find some good stuff on biodiesel? Heres’ a hot title
Biodiesel – A Realistic Fuel Alternative for Diesel Engines

Need some physical property data like the viscosity of Cl2 gas? A search of Knovel.com will link you to the Chemical Properties Handbook and Yaws’ Handbook of Thermodynamic and Physical Properties of Chemical Compounds

Need some good information on climate change? Here’s a good starting point Assessing Climate Change.

Circuit diagrams for operational amplifiers? Check out the Electrical Engineering Handbook.

All in all, you have access to more than five thousand science and engineering ebooks.

For a complete list (not including Books24X7 titles) go to the Science & Engineering Ebook site. There you can find A-Z titles lists of ebooks as well as the search interfaces for the ebook collections you have access to. Make sure you look at the Springer Ebooks as well. Springer is a major science and engineering publisher.

Remember that these resources are not freely available on internet, so if you are connecting from off campus, go to UBC’s VPN site for instructions.

Posted by Kevin Lindstrom Liaison Librarian for Earth and Ocean Sciences, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Materials Engineering, and Physics.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14699

The article discusses the experiments, provides a video and the images from the Collider that started to operate TODAY!

** Photo by µµ

Brought to you by the University of Nottingham the Periodic Table of Videos includes 118 videos about each element.

**Image courtesy of NSDL. Reusable NASA images.