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

Students and staff in UBC’s Centre for Advanced Wood Processing (CAWP) were given the task of creating all 23 Olympic and Paralympic wooden medal podia and the 100 wooden medal trays for the 2010 Winter Games. And yes, they delivered – http://www.cawp.ubc.ca/Whatwedo/CAWPProjects/tabid/3546/Default.aspx

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

BOULDER—Painting the roofs of buildings white has the potential to significantly cool cities and mitigate some impacts of global warming, a new study indicates. The new NCAR-led research suggests there may be merit to an idea advanced by U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu that white roofs can be an important tool to help society adjust to climate change.

Read the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) news release here. The full article published in Geophysical Research Letters can be read here.

Submitted by Kevin Lindstrom Liaison Librarian for Earth and Ocean Sciences

Dr. Vijay Bhargava is moving from his position as Editor in Chief of IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications to become IEEE Communications Society’s Director of Journals.

Read the full article here.

Submitted by Kevin Lindstrom Liaison Librarian for Electrical and Computer Engineering

EZproxy Unavailable – Thursday, Feb 4th, 2:00PM – 6:00PM

Because of the EZProxy work, Books 24×7 will have connection issues till possibly Friday morning. The “old” login (for anyone familiar with the blue screen) will work if you have a pre-existing account. The new will not. See the Library Information Page for your login options. Only “Alternate online access: Click here for the electronic version.” links will work in the catalog during this time.

Many thanks!

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 Street Level Forecast (SLF) is an interactive point forecast planning tool that brings customized forecasts to the user. SLF makes weather data accessible and user- friendly. Click on a specific location on an interactive map to receive personal forecasts such as wind and temperature that are provided on an easy-to-read graph.

The computer model that drives the SLF is run twice daily at a one kilometer resolution (a grid of points one kilometer apart across the region) and predicts conditions for the next 19 hours.

This SLF is an experimental prototype that Environment Canada will test during the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games period. This version will be live until March 31, 2010.

Submitted by Kevin Lindstrom Liaison Library for Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of British Columbia

The Huffington Post had a post yesterday about some beautiful world libraries. Personally, I liked the Yale’s Rare books library…

For books on libraries architecture, please see this link – http://resolve.library.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/catsearch?subject=Library+architecture

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

With the Winter 2010 Olympics less than 30 days away, the analytic chemists and their rivals are hard at work.

The journal Drug Testing and Analysis has a wide variety of articles looking at performance enhancing drugs and therapies.

Have a look at the article The hunt for gene dopers authored by Mansour, Mai M. H. and Azzazy, Hassan M. E.

Here’s the abstract of the article.
Gene doping, the abuse of gene therapy for illicit athletic enhancement, is perceived as a coming threat and is a prime concern to the anti-doping community. This doping technique represents a significant ethical challenge and there are concerns regarding its safety for athletes. This article presents the basics of gene doping, potential strategies for its detection and the role of promising new technologies in aiding detection efforts. These include the use of lab-on-a-chip techniques as well as nanoparticles to enhance the performance of current analytical methods and to develop new doping detection strategies. Copyright 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Medline and Web of Science and two excellent databases to monitor this spy vs spy battle between the IOC, the World Anti-Doping Agency and the performance enhancers.

Submitted by Kevin Lindstrom Liaison Librarian for Chemistry at the University of British Columbia

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/