Daily Bulletin

University of Waterloo -- Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

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Friday, July 25, 1997

It may grow like a weed, but . . .

A group of applied health sciences folk have embarked on a quest to save a little orchid struggling to bloom on campus. Epipactis helleborine has been treated like a weed long enough, they insist, and deserves more respect.

About a foot high, with multiple small greenish flowers tinged with purple, helleborine has been spotted growing on the east side of Matthews Hall under the junipers, in the shady picnic area near the fountain beside Math and Computer, and even in front of the president's office.

"Who speaks for flowers?" wondered Anne Ross, who, with Beverley Brookes, Nancy Poole and Hugh Scoggan, regularly stops to smell the roses, as well as admire the orchids. This year the group decided to take action. "Last year, a patch just about to bloom was yanked up by the groundspeople," Ross said. "It might be common," Scoggan adds, "but it's still an orchid."

At Brookes's suggestion, Scoggan crafted "tiny little tags made out of venetian blinds" to attach to each plant by Matthews Hall. The tags carry the message: "Helleborine (orchid family) Please do not destroy." Ross is meeting today with Les Van Dongen, of the grounds section of plant operations, to talk about making sure the flowers are protected in future.

The foursome traipses around the university in all seasons to monitor the flora and fauna, and Ross has noticed that more areas are being allowed to naturalize. "It's such a beautiful campus, we should enjoy it more."

Correcting a PhD listing

One of the PhD thesis listings in Wednesday's Gazette was garbled. Here's what it should have said:

Health Studies and Gerontology. Nancy Martin, "The Impact of Environmental Factors on the Development of Delirium". Supervisor, Dr. Michael Stones. Thesis on display in the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences, BMH 3120, and available for perusal until Tuesday, August 12, at noon; oral defence to be held Wednesday, August 13, at 9 a.m. in BMH room 3119.

The talk of the campus

A scholarship has been established at Conrad Grebel College in memory of a third-year arts student who died earlier this month. Rebecca Jayne Frey, 22, of Millbank, died of cancer. She was an associate student at Conrad Grebel, majoring in history and peace and conflict studies. Contributions to the Becky Frey Scholarship Fund may be made by contacting the college. . . .

[Distorted UW shield]
New logo is coming
The new design of UW's logo is not, repeat not, going to look like the swirled shield you see there -- but it will still have the lions and chevrons that are part of UW's official coat of arms, says Martin van Nierop, director of information and public affairs.
The new logo will be unveiled by the end of August, he says, along with "guidelines" for how it's to be used on UW publications.
People who need the new logo now to get it printed on things for September can make arrangements through the graphic design unit of graphic services.
Back from its 7th-place finish in Sunrayce '97, the Midnight Sun solar car team is thinking big. They are, their August newsletter announces, "looking at competing in the World Solar Challenge in Australia from October 18th to the 27th of 1998. The World Solar Challenge is the most prestigious solar car race in the world [and] much different from Sunrayce. The 3000km journey is not divided into stages and teams cruise as far as they can between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. . . . Because there are no scheduled stops, the teams must camp in the outback." . . .

Congratulations are due to two new Canadian citizens, Slavica Bogdanovic of chemistry stores and Mladen Bogdanovic of the plant operations custodial staff. Formerly of the former Yugoslavia, they received their citizenship this week. . . .

This year's Downey TennisFest, "the fun tennis tournament for all faculty, staff, retirees, etc.", is scheduled for Sunday, September 28, at the Waterloo Tennis Club. "Flyers announcing the event will be circulated the first week of September," says Sally Kemp of the athletics department, who's among the organizers. . . .

Today and the weekend

The engineering debates sponsored by the Sandford Fleming Foundation have been going on this week, with the final competition today. And much more is happening too:

The physics department today presents B. W. Southern of the University of Manitoba, speaking on "Spin Stiffness in Frustrated Antiferromagnets" -- Physics room 352, 10:30 a.m.

The UW Summer Choir presents its end-of-term concert Saturday night at 8 in the Theatre of the Arts. The performance is "Around the World and Home to Bed", especially geared to children, and tickets are $8 at the door ($5 for students, kids and seniors).

A Christian rock music festival is set for tomorrow, Saturday, in Waterloo Park, starting at noon. Among the main organizers of Charity Fest '97 is David Wang of UW's department of electrical and computer engineering. The purpose is to raise awareness of local charities; admission is free. "In addition to the music,many other fun family activities are being planned."

The city of Kitchener runs Kaleidoscope, the city's festival of the arts, this evening and all day tomorrow in the downtown area.

Electrical power, heating, cooling and ventilation will be shut down in the Student Life Centre tomorrow from 7 to 11 a.m., the plant operations department advises, for substation maintenance.

Waterloo Web site of the day

GERALDO TORRES
http://ece.uwaterloo.ca:80/~gltorres/

More than just a home page for a graduate student in electrical and computer engineering, this page is something special -- as you can tell instantly from the graphic that shows a Brazilian flag waving through a map of that South American nation.

Torres explains that his page has two purposes:

. . . letting people know what I am doing in my PhD research, and providing some information about the Brazilian culture, mainly the culture from the northeastern part of Brazil, the region I came from.
The audience to my web page is (i) everyone willing to know a little bit about the Brazilian culture, (ii) Brazilian students wishing to come to a university in the Kitchener-Waterloo region, and (iii) researchers working on the application of optimization techniques to power system problems.
I believe it has been pretty popular because I've received many comments by e-mail. The links in my home page to the home page of other Brazilian students at UW, provide information on parts of Brazil other than the Northeast.

Among the many links is one to the -- much more conservative -- home page of Torres's PhD supervisor, Victor Quintana.

By the way, was the page hard to create? No, says Torres. "I had no previous experience with programming in HTML, but I was able to develop my web in a couple of days only by reading some of the many tutorials on HTML that are available in the Internet. It's easy."

CAR

TODAY IN UW HISTORY July 25, 1994: UW and the Bank of Montreal announce a "partnership" for research and training in software technology.

July 26, 1993: The board of governors approves wage freezes and unpaid days for staff members under the Ontario Social Contract.

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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