June 7, 2004

Monday, June 7, 2004

Officials sign up voters this week
Black dot crossing the sun
Scraps on a Monday morning

Editor:
Chris Redmond
credmond@uwaterloo.ca

Losing his hair in a good cause was Paul Calamai, of the systems design engineering department, who agreed to a shaving as part of a fund-raising publicity student in support of cancer research. The student-organized event, which got a live spot on CKCO television news Thursday night, raised $18,500, with more still coming in, says Karim Lallani of the Engineering Society. That's Carolyn MacGregor, also of systems design, wielding the clippers; she endured the same treatment two years ago in an earlier fund-raiser. Photo by Ian Mackenzie.

Officials sign up voters this week

The federal election is three weeks away, and the customary campaigns are in full swing: those by the political parties to get their candidates into Parliament, and the campaign by student leaders to get young people to the polls.

"Because the result is very much up in the air, the student vote could make a huge difference," the Federation of Students says on its web site. And the local office of Elections Canada has hired recent graduate Ryan Chen-Wing as a "community relations officer (youth)". He writes: "Part of my role includes co-ordinating targeted revision, that is registration of students."

Staff from the returning office for Kitchener-Waterloo riding, which includes all of the city of Waterloo and a part of Kitchener, will be on campus this week to register students to vote on June 28.

Chen-Wing writes: "Students will need to bring identification and proof of residency. Proof of residency may be difficult for students who don't receive mail at the current address, but most of them should have leases, which show residency."

Times and places to get on the voters' list: Tuesday and Wednesday, 11:30 to 3:30, Student Life Centre or Carl Pollock Hall; 4:30 to 8:30, Dana Porter Library. Thursday, 11:30 to 3:30, Student Life Centre or Carl Pollock Hall; 4:30 to 7:30, Village I great hall.

"Satisfactory documentation" for election officials includes one of the three following options:

One document including name, current address and signature of the elector, such as a driver's licence.

Two documents: one showing the name and signature of the elector, such as a library card, and one showing the name and current address of the elector, such as utility bill.

An affidavit signed before a person authorized to receive oaths in the province or territory and containing the name, current address and signature of the elector.

Black dot crossing the sun -- from the UW media relations office

The Canadian SCISAT-1 spacecraft will be among the few satellites observing the historic transit of Venus as part of the Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment (ACE) mission based at the University of Waterloo.

Tomorrow a rare event will be visible from the Earth, as for the first time in 122 years Venus will pass in front of the disk of the sun in what is known as a planetary transit. The duration of the transit is just more than six hours, from about 1 a.m. to 7 a.m. (EDT).

European Southern Observatory site about the transit of Venus
Viewing times, from NASA

Webcast and viewing information

From the ground, the event will be visible from most of Europe, Africa and Asia. Canadians living east of Regina in the south or Whitehorse in the north can observe the end of the transit during and just after sunrise on Tuesday.

Unlike a lunar eclipse where the entire solar disk can be occluded, Venus will appear only as a small dot crossing the edge of the sun. Nevertheless, with suitable protective glasses, the transit should be visible to the eye. online advice on eye safety during eclipses applies also to the transit of Venus.)

In addition to a vast number of ground-based observations, a few satellites will also observe the transit. SCISAT-1 will observe the transit as part of the ACE studies that are measuring and understanding the chemical processes that control the distribution of atmospheric ozone in the Arctic. The ACE scientific team is led by UW chemistry professor Peter Bernath.

On Tuesday, the on-board infrared Fourier transform spectrometer will be focused on Venus -- something that's possible because of a fortuitous gap in the regular Earth observations resulting from the spacecraft orbit. Bernath and his colleagues, with the support of the Canadian Space Agency satellite operations centre in St. Hubert, Québec, have exploited this good fortune and devised a series of measurements that aim to improve understanding of planetary transits.

The transit of extra-solar planets has become a hot topic in modern astronomy as the search for life beyond our solar system continues. SCISAT-1 observations of the Venus transit may prove to be a valuable model of such a system. In addition, by observing the Venus transit, researchers hope to improve the calibration of the scientific instrument pointing that will ultimately improve routine atmospheric measurements.

Scraps on a Monday morning

First of all, apologies to a few Daily Bulletin readers who saw text on Friday morning saying that this week's Keystone Campaign party was happening on Thursday. In fact the Keystone event is Wednesday, from 11:30 to 1:30 at the Columbia Icefield, and most readers will have gotten the correct information.

WHEN AND WHERE

Class enrolment appointments for fall term undergraduate courses, today through July 3 on Quest. Enrolment period for students enrolling for the first time: July 5-24. Open enrolment starts July 26.

Senate executive committee, 3:30, Needles Hall room 3004.

Credit union seminar, "The Truth About 0% Auto Financing", Vaughn Sauve, Waterloo County Education Credit Union, Tuesday 12:15, Davis Centre room 1302.

Engineering alumni networking and pub night in Toronto, Tuesday 6 p.m., Frog and Firkin, 4854 Yonge Street.

Three-pitch baseball organized by UW Recreation Committee, all employees welcome, Wednesday 6:15, Columbia Fields, sign-up uwrc@admmail.

Details have been announced about a memorial service for Rob Macdonald, the mechanical engineering faculty member who died last month. The service is set for Thursday afternoon, at 3:00 in the Theatre of the Arts, Modern Languages building. It will be preceded (at 2:30) by a tree-planting in the courtyard between Engineering II and Rod Coutts Hall, organized by the Engineering Society. At the ceremony itself, speakers will include colleagues, a student representative, and dean of engineering Adel Sedra. Refreshments will follow, and all are welcome.

It's a hot and muggy day (local weather officials have issued a smog advisory), but some dedicated golfers will be out on the course anyway. Today brings the annual President's Golf Tournament, a fund-raiser for the Athletics Excellence Fund, "which has served," publicity says, "to provide extraordinary opportunities for the athletes and coaches at the University of Waterloo. These opportunities will foster the growth and development of our leaders of tomorrow." In three years the event has raised some $170,000. Today's fourth annual tournament is taking place at Rebel Creek Golf Club in Petersburg, west of Waterloo.

The World Jiu-Jitsu Championships are under way in Kitchener-Waterloo this week, with final competition taking place on the weekend at what Ticketmaster calls "miscellaneous venues" -- mainly, the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium. The Canadian Jiu-Jitsu Association is hosting the competition. Several hundred participants will be staying in UW's Ron Eydt Village conference centre, some of them arriving as early as today.

The UW media relations office has announced that a major lecture scheduled for this week has been cancelled. The Arriscraft Lecture that was to be given Thursday night by Ernst Giselbrecht, of Graz, Austria, on "Architecture as Cultural Commitment", will not be taking place. The series does continue June 17 with a talk by Jean Beaudoin of Montréal.

CAR

Communications and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo
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(519) 888-4567 ext. 3004
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