Daily Bulletin

Web page by physicist Michael Hudson, one of the new PREA winners, shows how a black hole might distort his face

Thirteen more $100,000 grants

Most of the funding will go to pay grad students, post-doctoral fellows and other young researchers working with the PREA winners, who must be faculty members in the first eight years of their career.

Results of "round 5" in the PREA competition were announced by Ontario treasurer Ernie Eves "on behalf of the premier" at a dinner in Toronto Tuesday evening. In previous announcements earlier this year, Waterloo received nine PREA awards in July and four in September.

"Of 24 applications submitted in September, Waterloo received 13 awards -- a 54% success rate," says Andrew Barker of the UW research office. "This is tremendous news, and proof of the excellence of Waterloo's young faculty. The awards represent funding of $1,300,000 from the province; with matching funding from partners of $650,000 the overall impact raises to almost $2,000,000."

The winners from UW this time round:

• Daniela O'Neill, psychology
• Mike Dixon, psychology
• Pu Chen, chemical engineering
• Fakhri Karray, systems design
• Penny Haxell, combinatorics and optimization
• Raouf Boutaba, computer science
• Alexandru Nica, pure mathematics
• Mathilakath Vijayan, biology
• Garry Hanan, chemistry
• Holger Kleinke, chemistry
• Christopher Hudson, optometry
• James Forrest, physics
• Michael Hudson, physics

The PREA program was introduced in 1998 "to help Ontario's world-class researchers attract talented people to their research teams and to encourage innovation among the province's brightest young researchers at universities, colleges, hospitals and research institutes". It's slated to spend $85 million in provincial funding over ten years, matched by $42.5 million from other sources. To date, 305 researchers have received awards.

UW and IBM win telelearning award

Says Carey: "The award cited the work of three faculty members in engineering, all collaborating with Karel Vredenburg, IBM's Global Lead for User-Centred Design." Two of the three are also on the LT3 staff. The winners:

• Ji-Ye Mao (right) of management sciences, "who is investigating best practice amongst professional designers of human-computer interaction to aid in design of support tools for their work".
• Liwana Bringelson of systems design engineering and LT3, whose work in "Online Knowledge Co-operatives" includes the TeleCHI experiments and a regular online seminar series cohosted by Vredenburg.
• Tom Carey of management sciences and LT3, whose work on "Interactive Multimedia and Knowledge Stewardship" will be featured in an international workshop, co-led with Vredenburg, to be held in Seattle next year.

How to make Eudora run faster -- by Pat Lafranier, Client Services, IST

1. Automatic checking of mail: no less than 15 minutes. (Tools -- Options -- Checking Mail)
2. Keep the number of mail messages in the In, Out and Trash mailboxes at a minimum. (Less than 100 may be a good "rule of thumb".) These three mailboxes are loaded into memory when Eudora is running. Qualcomm recommends to keep these mailboxes small and each of these mailboxes be no more than 1MB. Get in the habit of creating mailboxes, and transferring the mail to these mailboxes. For example, create a new mailbox for older outgoing mail titled "out1999". Then transfer all 1999 dated mail from the Out mailbox to the newly created mailbox.
3. Do not leave mail on the server unless necessary. (Most people don't need to leave mail on the server.) For example, if someone reads e-mail from another location he/she may want to keep mail on the server for a certain number of days. (Tools -- Options -- Incoming Mail.) Please note that if kept on the server, then it is best to select the option to automatically delete after "x" number of days. An adequate "x" would be 7 days. If you do not choose a specific number of days, then the mail needs to be manually deleted by telneting to the server (e.g. admmail) every few weeks. This action can be an inconvenience.
4. Don't keep a lot of windows open in Eudora. To quickly close all open windows, in Windows press Ctrl + Shift + W; on a Mac, press Command (Apple key) + Option + W.

The Seagram legacy Seagram Co. Ltd., which voted itself out of existence earlier this week, is not just a piece of Canadian business history but a big part of UW's past. The company was founded in Waterloo, and could trace its roots to 1857; the original Joseph E. Seagram was the first Member of Parliament for Waterloo North. Seagram Drive, leading onto campus, perpetuates the family name in this city, and UW's archives now have much of the material that was preserved in the Seagram Museum in the company's old Erb Street distillery from 1984 to 1997. Seagram's built Seagram Stadium and Gymnasium for UW in 1958 -- it's now "University Stadium" and owned by Wilfrid Laurier University -- and was a major corporate supporter in the university's early years.

Notes on the first day of exams

Meanwhile, of course, people are looking ahead to the winter term. And I'd like to emphasize that classes begin on Wednesday, January 3, even though (as I said the other day) the university "reopens" after the Christmas break on Tuesday, January 2.

Among the winter term courses that are currently looking for students is one in the religious studies department, RS 213, "Hinduism". A bright green flyer from the instructor, A. MacKenzie Pearson, promises "a study of the development of religious thought in India from the Vedic Period to the present". The RS department, phone ext. 3497, can provide more information.

On Tuesday I was saying that there's likely to be more money come in to the United Way campaign, even though it's over. Sure enough: "Just to inform you," campaign co-chair Chandrika Anjaria wrote last night, "we have received more money today." She calculates the year's total at $163,702.71.

Some folks called the Paradox Theatre Company are using the Humanities Theatre this week and next for a production of Caryl Churchill's play "Top Girls": "Imagine history's most famous women, all seated at a banquet table -- a little food, a little wine and a lot of stories. Now imagine the typical girls' night out." Performances are tonight through Saturday, and again December 14-16, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $12.50 (students $9.50) -- phone 729-5495.

A note for people who want to buy computers tomorrow: too bad. The computer store will be closed Friday, December 8, for inventory, the retail services department says.

Here's advance word that the Christmas luncheon for mature students will be held Thursday, December 14, in the Festival Room. The mature student services office, phone ext. 2429, is taking reservations.

A memo (not unexpected) from the university secretariat: "At its meeting on December 4, and in accordance with Senate Bylaw 2, the Senate Executive Committee agreed the agenda did not warrant holding a Senate meeting on December 18. All items on the agenda were for information only. They will be brought forward to Senate at its January meeting."

CAR

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