A team of physicists at the Californian Institute of Technology has claimed that our view of the early Universe may contain the signature of a time before the Big Bang.

Dr Adrienne Erickcek, and colleagues from the California Institute for Technology (Caltech), now believes these fluctuations contain hints that our Universe “bubbled off” from a previous one.

Their data comes from Nasa’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), which has been studying the Cosmic Microwage Background since its launch in 2001.

Their model suggests that new universes could be created spontaneously from apparently empty space. From inside the parent universe, the event would be surprisingly unspectacular.

Click here to read the full BBC news article

The preprint version of the article submitted to Physical Review Letters, A Hemispherical Power Asymmetry from Inflation is available at arxiv.org.

There is a UBC connection to this research. Dr. Mark Halpern from UBC’s Department of Physics and Astronomy is directly involved in
WMAP Research and is a member of the WMAP Science Team.

This long awaited report by the US Climate Change Science Program analyzes the effects of global change on natural and human environments, agriculture, water resources, social systems, energy production and use, transportation, and human health. It analyzes current trends in global change, both natural and human-induced, and it projects major trends for the future.

On their site – http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/scientific-assessment/ you can find the full report, the executive summary and other related materials.

** Photo by Enzo D

Brian Greene, a professor of physics at Columbia, and the author of The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos, writes about “the powerful role science can play in giving life context and meaning.”

Put a Little Science in Your Life

** photo by smiling_da_vinci

New types of journal metrics grow more influential in the scientific community

AT ONE POINT in his career, Nobel Laureate Sir Harold W. Kroto was the second most highly cited chemist in Britain—topped only by the University of Southampton’s Martin Fleischmann, one of the proponents of cold fusion.

Kroto, who codiscovered C60 and is currently a chemistry professor at Florida State University, declines to draw any conclusions from that experience. But given the ultimate fate of cold fusion, the anecdote suggests that citation statistics aren’t always a good indicator of scientific excellence.

Read the full article at Chemical & Engineering News

The Journal of Number Theory has created a presence on YouTube with video author abstracts.
JNT features selected research articles that represent the broad spectrum of interest in contemporary number theory and allied areas. A valuable resource for mathematicians, the journal provides an international forum for the publication of original research in this field.

https://www.youtube.com/user/JournalNumberTheory

As part of the UBC Library’s mandate to archive undergraduate research, two honors theses have just been added to the Physics and Astronomy Community in cIRcle – UBC’s Information Repository.

Measurement of Upsilon (1S) Production at BaBar
by Rocky So.

A Deformation Induced Quantum Dot by Daniel
Woodsworth.

If you are interested in contributing your undergraduate thesis to cIRcle, please contact me directly kevin.lindstrom@ubc.ca.

IEEE.tv is an internet based television network that produces and delivers special-interest programming about technology and engineering for the benefit of IEEE’s members and the general public.

IEEE.tv Public Access is free of charge to the public, and does not require IEEE membership or log-in.

Here is the url to view its programs – http://www.ieee.tv

Some recent programs include:

* Emerging Field of Biomedical Engineering
* Energy Innovations: The Hydrogen House
* Group on Earth Observations(GEOSS): Technology

** Photo by ___federico___ [happily married]

Microsoft’s much anticipated WorldWide Telescope was released on Tuesday – May 12th, 2008.

There is a very nice article about it in the New York Times – Two New Ways to Explore the Virtual Universe, in Vivid 3-D

Moreover, around two months ago, Google also introduced a Web-based version of Google Sky, layering space images on its searchable map service.

Take a look on the books UBC Library has on this topic of Astronomy

** Photo by Fort Photo

Dr. Bernard Laval and his PhD student Alex Forrest were invited to join a NOAA Signature Expedition to do baseline mapping of the state of coral reefs surrounding Bonaire (Dutch Antilles) using UBC-Gavia, UBC’s robot submersible. More information about the expedition can be found at: NOAA Ocean Explorer: Bonaire 2008.

**Photo by divemasterking2000

This blog is created and (being) maintained by three Science and Engineering librarians at the University of British Columbia (UBC): Aleteia Greenwood, Kevin Lindstrom and Eugene Barsky.

The purpose and mandate of this blog is to serve as a communication tool for us to let our liaison departments know about the services we offer to them, workshops we teach, databases and electronic/print resources and also what happens worldwide that might be of relevance to us at UBC.

The information is parsed and granulated to relevant categories, so if you are interested in a specific category, click on it to see what we have to offer in that discipline or subject.

Please send any of your comments and suggestions our way – we would be delighted to hear from you!