![[Black truck]](/images/2004/0304truck.gif)
This Silverado is one of the vehicles converted to a contest-winner
by the UW Alternative Fuels Team
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Students showcase engineering this week
Engineering students will be at
Conestoga
Mall in north Waterloo today to
raise awareness about the importance of engineering and technology and
to encourage young people to consider careers in engineering and
technology.
Engineering student projects, including
Formula
SAE, Mini-Baja,
WARG,
and Midnight
Sun, will be on display at the
mall from 9:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. as part of Waterloo's contribution to
National Engineering Week.
"We want people to come out and take a look at our displays and see
what kind of things engineering students do. We will have plenty of
people on hand to answer questions about the projects or engineering in
general, says Marc Joyce, co-director of National Engineering Week for
the Engineering Society.
The Tool, the Ridgid 60-inch straight pipe wrench that is the engineering
mascot, will also be on display.
This weekend, students will be on hand at the
Waterloo Regional Children's
Museum helping to run
K'nex construction workshops for
local children. From 10 a.m. to
4 p.m. on Saturday and 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday,
volunteers will work with children on the popular
building materials to help light the spark of imagination.
Another feature of Engineering Week will be the 28th annual
Bus Push, to be held Saturday starting at 10 a.m. As in the past,
engineers will push a disabled Grand River Transit bus from
campus into downtown Kitchener along University Avenue and King
Street. This year's
charity fund-raiser will support the MS Society of Canada
through a pledge to the UW Engineering Team at the spring
Super Cities
Walk for MS.
Virus carries fake UW address
Mydoom, Bagle, Netsky --
the
computer viruses keep coming, and yesterday they were arriving with
return addresses that hit close to home.
Many examples of the Bagle (or Beagle) virus arrived with such return
addresses as "administration@uwaterloo.ca" and content telling users to
take immediate action to protect their e-mail accounts. They're
fakes, designed to get people to open attachments that carry the virus.
"We have been fielding calls in the IST helpdesk about this virus
throughout the day," says Jason Greatrex of information systems and
technology.
"These official looking messages have a malicious .zip or .pif file
attached to them. Please use extreme caution."
Users with questions can reach the help desk at ext. 4357, or find out
more about the virus from
Symantec.
It's not just Waterloo, as the same problem is
happening at other institutions -- the University of Delaware, for example,
put out
a similar warning yesterday.
Nine profs win research excellence awards --
from the UW media relations office
Nine faculty members are
recipients of the Premier's Research Excellence Awards, which aim to
encourage innovation among Ontario's best and brightest young
researchers within 10 years of receiving their PhDs.
The researchers will each get $150,000 over the next five years, with
$100,000 in provincial money and $50,000 from university or corporate
co-sponsors. The funding supports graduate students, post-doctoral
fellows and other young researchers working with the PREA recipients.
The latest UW PREA recipients come from across the campus:
Mark
Aagaard, electrical and computer engineering, "Verified
Design Patterns for Pipelined Circuits." He explains:
"In the design of digital hardware systems, such as microprocessors,
design engineers usually choose evolutionary solutions over radical
innovations. Even if the radical innovations
would provide significant benefits in performance, area or power,
engineers are hesitant to explore new regions of the design space for
fear of introducing bugs into their hardware."
The PREA funding will enable Aagaard to recruit a post-doctoral
fellow to develop verified design patterns for pipe-lined circuits,
used in digital-hardware systems ranging from simple
signal-processing filters to high-performance microprocessors.
Otman
Basir, systems design, "Biologically
Inspired Sensory Modules for Intelligent Vehicles."
The award will enable Basir to investigate and develop innovative
biologically inspired sensors and sensing techniques with emphasis on
intelligent transportation systems in the car industry.
The research should result in significant publication activity in the
field of intelligent transportation systems design technologies that
can be commercialized.
Duane
Cronin, mechanical engineering, "Advanced Numerical
Modeling of Trauma to the Human Body."
Says Cronin:
![[Layers: ceramic, composite, anti-trauma]](/images/2004/0304armour.gif)
"Typical hybrid armour" that might be used by
peacekeepers -- a diagram on Duane Cronin's Impact Biomechanics web site
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"The Premier's Research Excellence Award will allow me to expand
vital areas of my current research program in Impact Biomechanics and
significantly advance an emerging area of research in numerical
modelling of trauma to the human body. The techniques
and knowledge developed in this area will lead towards the
development of a 'virtual human' for use in assessing and improving
automotive vehicle crashworthiness."
Krzysztof
Czarnecki, E&CE, "Generative Domain Modelling for Rapid
Software Application Development."
The award will help will help launch a research program
aimed at improving productivity and quality in software development
through generative technologies. The project will lead to tool
prototypes and case studies.
Derek
Koehler, psychology, "Individual Retirement Savings and
Credit Card Debt: Good Intentions, Optimistic Predictions and Costly
Decisions."
"Much of my research concerns how people make predictions and plans,"
Koehler says, adding that the award will allow him to extend his
research to the topic of financial planning and decision-making.
He will probe the role of overly optimistic predictions
regarding future financial expenditures in the tendency of many
individuals to accumulate credit card debt and save insufficiently
for retirement.
By investigating how people predict their future spending and saving,
the research will help to provide a foundation for development of
tools that Canadians can use to more realistically evaluate their
financial future and take the steps necessary to make it brighter.
Robert
Linsley, fine arts, "Painting as a Paradigm for
Conceptual, Sculptural and Installation Practices Since the Late
1960s."
Linsley will supervise research on abstract painting and
sculpture of the period from 1967 to 1972 and original creative work
by young artists. The aim is to explore why abstract
painting became the source for new directions in sculpture and
installation, and how an understanding of that history can enable new
departures in contemporary art.
Zoran
Miskovic, applied math, "Interactions of Nano-Particles with Matter."
Besides forming a research group in the area of interactions of
nano-particles, the award will help Miskovic's group establish
contacts and initiate collaborations with a broad range of
nano-researchers through the relevant national and international
networks.
"Since nano-science is an extremely rapidly developing area, it is
imperative to stay alert of the ongoing research activity," he says.
Mahesh
Pandey, civil engineering, "Risk Assessment and Cost
Effective Management of Energy Systems and Infrastructure."
Improvement in power generation and transmission capacity is considered key to
economic success and an enhanced quality of life in Ontario and
Canada. The award will enable work to develop scientific protocols
for inspection, assessment and refurbishment of power transmission
systems. "The research results of the program are expected to reduce the
operating costs, improve the efficiency and prolong the service life
of critical engineering systems in power generation and transmission
facilities," Pandey says.
Edlyn
Teske, combinatorics and optimization,
"Number-Theoretic Security of Public-Key Cryptosystems."
"I anticipate exciting joint work on current and new public-key
cryptographic schemes, both in terms of theoretical investigations
and practical implementations," Teske says.
"Disseminating our results in print and presentations will result in
increased confidence in currently deployed cryptographic tools and
will provide guidance for future applications in sectors such as
electronic commerce or homeland security."
| WHEN
AND WHERE |
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'Learning Design: Developing New Standards", LT3 workshop,
10:30, Flex lab, Dana Porter Library.
Funeral service for Gerard Campbell, St. Jerome's University
philosophy professor, 11:00, St. John's Roman Catholic Church,
Strange Street, Kitchener.
'Hydraulic Habitats in Streams and Rivers", Robert Newbury,
Newbury
Hydraulics, 1:30, Davis Centre room 1302.
Career workshops: "Interview Skills", 2:30, "Preparing for
Questions", 3:30, Tatham Centre room 1208.
New York alumni reception, 6 to 8 p.m., Canadian Club, West 44 Street.
Arriscraft architecture lecture, Barry Sampson, "Inflection and
Innuendo: Building and Just After", 7 p.m., Environmental Studies
II room 286.
'Spiritual Fitness for Life', Mohamed Elmasry, presented by
Spiritual Heritage
Education Network, 7 p.m., Math and Computer room 4021.
'The Reception of Islamic Science in Western Europe", George Saliba,
Columbia University, 7 p.m., Rod Coutts Hall room 101.
'After the Double Cohort: Student-Community Relations", symposium
sponsored
by City of Waterloo, opening panel
tonight 8 p.m., Waterloo Memorial Recreation Complex.
Bomber beach party with music and
raffles, proceeds to increasing accessibility at
Renison College, starts 9 p.m., Bombshelter Pub.
Warrior Weekend events Friday (karaoke, "Mona Lisa Smile",
"Gothika") and Saturday (coffee house, juggling festival), Student
Life Centre.
Charity Ball sponsored by
Smiling Over
Sickness, dinner and dancing at Knights of Columbus Hall, Thursday,
March 11, tickets $25 from SOS booth in Student Life Centre.
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Lectures explore Mennonite community
Nancy
Heisey, president of the
Mennonite
World Conference, will present the
2004 Bechtel Lectures in Anabaptist Mennonite Studies at Conrad Grebel
University College tonight and tomorrow.
"Life and Witness within the Global Mennonite World Conference
Community" is the theme.
Tonight, Heisey will speak about "Shaping and Being Shaped:
Anabaptist Identity(ies) Past and Present". Friday, her
lecture is entitled "Martyrdom as Metaphor: Aspects of Global Anabaptist
Witness". Both lectures will start at 7 p.m. in the great hall at
Conrad Grebel. A reception will follow the presentation.
Heisey is associate
professor of biblical studies and church history at Eastern Mennonite
University in Virginia.
"We're particularly pleased to have Nancy Heisey present the 2004
Bechtel Lectures," said Henry Paetkau, Grebel's president. "She
will help us think beyond the North American experience of 'being
Mennonite' and consider what it means to be part of a global Mennonite
and Brethren in Christ community."
A global perspective is important and appropriate not only for a lecture
series dedicated to
Anabaptist/Mennonite
themes but also for
Conrad
Grebel, which stands in that faith tradition, he said.
The Bechtel Lectures in Anabaptist Mennonite Studies were established in
2000 by Waterloo County businessman and farmer Lester Bechtel, in honour
of his late wife, Alma. The purpose of the lectureship is to foster
interest in and understanding of Anabaptist/Mennonite faith by seeing it
through the eyes of experts from a range of disciplines.
CAR
Communications
and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo
200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1
(519) 888-4567 ext. 3004
bulletin.uwaterloo.ca |
Yesterday's Daily Bulletin
Copyright © 2004 University of Waterloo
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