Daily Bulletin

University of Waterloo -- Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

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Wednesday, July 23, 1997

Last event for groundwater centre

A get-together at the Waterloo Inn this afternoon is the last hurrah for the Waterloo Centre for Groundwater Research, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary and looking ahead to being merged with another provincial "centre of excellence".

WCGR is being merged with the Institute for Space and Terrestrial Science to become the new Centre for Research in Earth and Space Technology -- CRESTech. The change is part of an Ontario government move to cut the number of "centres" from seven to four. The new CRESTech will seek "to achieve and maintain world-class excellence in multidisciplinary collaborative research and development in space and earth sciences with a focus on: water, earth and the atmosphere" and "to advance the management of our natural resource capital by providing leadership and innovative solutions in measuring, monitoring and remediating earth's environment".

A launch event for CRESTech is set for September 24 in Toronto.

"At WCGR we feel this is a very positive outcome for the Centres Program, in light of severe expenditure restraint by the government," says Art Headlam, acting director of WCGR. "Not only is the overall OCE Program being funded at 87% of the previous level, but WCGR is moving from a small centre funded at just under $2 million per year to become an integral part of a larger centre with a broader focus and a total annual budget of over $7 million."

About 100 people are invited to today's event, says Leanne Gelsthorpe of WCGR. "We will have, through a series of displays, a ten-year retrospective. To say the least, it should be entertaining!" A business meeting at 2:00 begins the events. Presentations about the "old" and "new" centres will follow, and "networking" runs from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m.

Cashiers in a new place

"The time has come," writes Jo Ann Chesher, supervisor of the cashiers' office in Needles Hall. She and her colleagues have been waiting to be moved to temporary locations so their first-floor offices can be renovated, and today is the day.

The cashiers should be open for business this morning on the second floor of Needles Hall -- room 2091, best known as the old wickets along the corridor opposite the registrar's office.

Other staff from the same area -- student accounts, registration accounting, scholarships -- are in a new home today in room 4034 of the Math and Computer building. All phone numbers remain as they were, Chesher says: accounts inquiries ext. 5583, scholarship inquiries ext. 6617, registration accounting ext. 3611.

'Synergy' award to UW project

The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and The Conference Board of Canada have announced that the Canadian Strategic Software Consortium has been chosen as a winner in the 1997 University-Industry Synergy R&D Partnerships Award Program. CSSC is a contractual joint venture of UW and seven Canadian software companies.

The sponsors of the award program say that "high quality research and effective university-industry collaboration are essential to Canada's future economic and social well-being." Winning entries in the competition will be showcased at a national symposium on university-industry collaboration October 23-24 in Richmond, British Columbia.

UW's award is in the category for R&D ventures involving at least two industry partners. The participating companies' businesses focus on three different areas of software technology: text retrieval software (Fulcrum Technologies and Open Text), Internet utilities and editors (InContext Corp. and SoftQuad), and systems integration (Megalith Technologies, PSSoftware and Grafnetix Systems).

Happening today at Waterloo

There wasn't a huge response when the Student Life Centre announced a "Student Art and Other Stuff Sale" for today through Friday, but the event is going ahead anyway, says Nancy O'Neill in the SLC. There will be five tables with crafts and black-and-white photos for sale -- in operation 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. for the three days. In association with the sale, there will be a coffee house starting at 7:30 Friday night. O'Neill says the SLC will promote such a sale again in the fall term and hopes to get more people selling their art and, well, stuff.

"Into the Woods", a Stephen Sondheim musical, will be performed in the Humanities Theatre tonight, tomorrow and Friday evenings by the Performing Arts Summer School of the Waterloo Region Separate School Board. It's an annual activity for elementary and high school students, aimed at "productions the entire community will enjoy".

And a couple of announcements

The Centre for Contact Lens Research is doing a study to compare two types of bifocal soft contact lenses: one that's now available, one that isn't. Wanted for the study are some individuals who have worn contact lenses in the past and who use reading or bifocal glasses. Participants must be at least 40, and not currently wearing bifocal contact lenses. Time commitment: about eight 90-minute visits to the centre over an eight-week period. Reward: $150, plus all study supplies. More information: ext. 4742 or lvoss@sciborg.

With the bulk of the Dearing report on higher education in Britain being released today, news on it will be delayed until tomorrow's Daily Bulletin.

Waterloo Web site of the day

PERSONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY SOFTWARE
http://library.uwaterloo.ca/~dhmorton/dnh4.html

"So you want to maintain your reprint file index (or your thesis bibliography, or your personal library catalogue) on computer instead of 3X5 cards?" asks Doug Morton, one of UW's reference librarians, in this "Doug's Notes" web page. He begins by explaining that there are things you might want to do that can't easily be done in standard database software, and goes on to offer a comparison of software designed specially for the purpose. Morton explains:

"Can I dump this into a database?" is one of the questions I frequently get. Having helped people generate bibliographies in electronic format for many years I've had to respond that it's not as simple as it looks -- unless you get the right tool (why is explained on the page).
While I had neither the time nor the money to purchase and do a comparison of several packages, others had. So my site consists of why you might want this sort of software; directory to websites of bibliographic software producers; a short bibliography of some product reviews.

There's also a pointer to the rest of Doug's Notes, which deal with such topics as "Library Catalogues in the KW area" and a dictionary of acronyms -- TLAs, or Three Letter Acronyms, and longer ones -- often found in newsgroup postings.

CAR

TODAY IN UW HISTORY July 23, 1986: A group of staff from the registrar's office hold a pre-breakfast television party to watch the wedding of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson.

Editor of the Daily Bulletin: Chris Redmond
Information and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo
credmond@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca -- (519) 888-4567 ext. 3004
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