Daily Bulletin

UW prof most cited in his field-- from the UW News Bureau

Hughson, a member of UW's kinesiology department since 1976, was recently ranked number one in the top 20 citation lists of the Journal of Applied Physiology, one of the leading journals in the field published by the American Physiological Society. A citation means that Hughson's research is referred to by other scientists in their work.

His achievement marks the first time a Waterloo kinesiologist has headed the prestigious list. At UW, Hughson supervises the research program in the Cardiorespiratory and Vascular Dynamics Laboratory, where he and his co-researchers explore the mechanisms responsible for adapting to the stress of physical activity or changes in posture.

To earn the citation ranking, Hughson, along with three-co-authors, wrote the paper entitled, "Dependence of muscle VO2 on blood flow dynamics at onset of forearm exercise." It was ranked in the journal's top 20 citation lists for the week of February 2.

The three co-authors, Kevin Shoemaker, Michael Tschakovsky and John Kowalchuk, are former students of Hughson, and are currently working at other universities -- Tschakovsky at Queen's and Shoemaker and Kowalchuk at Western Ontario.

"My students and I work hard in the lab to develop new ways in which we can better understand the factors that allow us to complete physical tasks in the workplace or in recreational activities," Hughson said.

"We were very excited to have been the first group in the world to be able to measure muscle oxygen utilization in the rest-to-exercise transition. Now we are even more excited that other scientists are reading and responding to our research."

Hughson's research interests include the cardio-respiratory system and its response to exercise and ability of the cardiovascular and respiratory systems to adapt to changing environments. He also studies the performance of elite endurance athletes, such as marathon runners.

Currently, he is examining the regulation of blood pressure and brain flow in young and old men and women as they move to an upright posture. The research seeks to provide insight that could prevent falls in older people.

As well, his research group is preparing to study astronauts returning from the international space station in an effort to reduce the risk of fainting when they re-enter earth's gravity.

Upgrading of the computer network-- a status report by Roger Watt, information systems and technology

Phase one of the project started in 1997 and took until the end of 1998 to complete. It resulted in 12 core Ethernet switches and two routing modules, and an initial 70 workgroup Ethernet switches, sufficient to establish "points of presence" in many buildings and upgrade 1800 computer connections. Most of those workgroup switches provide each computer with a dedicated 10Mbps (ten million bits per second) connection to the switch. A few have dual-mode ability for both 10Mbps and 100Mbps connections. The "uplink" from the workgroup switch toward the core of the network operates at 100Mbps. Most of the funding came from a $700K grant from the Canada/Ontario Infrastructure Works (COIW) program.

Phase two of the project started in 1999 and will take until 2002 to complete. It involves installing additional twisted-pair (UTP) cabling and Ethernet switches to replace old coaxial cabling and Ethernet repeaters that provide about 4000 computer connections in academic areas. Most switch connections will be 10/100Mbps, with a 100Mbps uplink and the ability to upgrade that to 1000Mbps (Gigabit Ethernet) when needed in the future. Funding is via grants from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI), the Ontario Research and Development Challenge Fund (ORDCF), and the Ontario Innovation Trust (OIT), plus UW money, totaling $1.7M over the three years. Those grants cannot be used for upgrades in areas such as teaching-facility computer workrooms or non-academic buildings such as Needles Hall. At the same time, additional grants in support of the Bell Canada University Labs project are providing network upgrades for the research groups in the Davis Centre.

Future upgrades: There are currently more than 9,600 computers in the campus network. Teaching-area facilities and the non-academic buildings that are still using coaxial cabling and/or Ethernet repeaters will be upgraded, where needed, as/when funds become available to the University.

To quote Duane Kennedy, Associate Dean of Computing in the Faculty of Arts, "We are moving from an environment where many computers are networked to share thin pipelines to an environment where each computer has a private wider pipeline but in spite of the wider pipelines, we still have to share a constrained resource."

One of the objectives for the UW campus network is that it be well connected to the external communities of greatest interest to UW. Membership in the provincial ONet Networking corporation is providing that connectivity for UW at the provincial, national, and international levels. The ONet network is connected to a number of national networks in Canada, each of which also provides international connections to the US and other countries, which in turn have connections to national networks in additional countries. One of the national networks in Canada is CA*net3, the "Optical IP" multi-gigabit backbone network that interconnects the provincial research/education networks like ONet.

Currently, UW's ONet connection is in two distinct parts, a 10Mbps "general Internet" connection, and a separate 5Mbps "university communities" connection. The 5Mbps connection carries all traffic to and from most of the other universities in Ontario, and, via CA*net3, the universities in the rest of Canada and the many universities in the US and a half-dozen other countries that have "advanced Internet" networks like CA*net3.

There is great hope that the 5Mbps link will become 1Gbps before the end of 2000. Ontario's Ministry of Energy, Science, and Technology recently issued a Request For Proposal for the creation of a new provincial "Optical IP" backbone network (ORION) to provide gigabit-speed connectivity to improve research and instructional collaboration between Ontario's universities and colleges.

Of course, that does not improve UW's general-Internet connectivity. The 10Mbps link is always the most heavily loaded and by far the most expensive of all the links in the campus network. Such general-Internet connectivity is a commodity that is "volume priced" by the national and international Internet Service Providers. UW benefits from the high-volume discount that ONet Networking is able to obtain from those ISPs by aggregating the needs of its members. However, general-Internet connectivity does not hold the attention of granting agencies that provide funding to support research and education. So, for the general-Internet link, we are exploring various "Quality of Service" queuing mechanisms in the continuing attempt to ensure that use that is not related to UW's mission does not impact on availability for use that is.

To help reduce the load on the general-Internet link and at the same time improve connectivity with the KW-area local community, we provide direct connections with interested local ISPs. It is still unknown what impact the federal Smart Communities and provincial Connect Ontario programs will have on improved network-layer connectivity between UW and the KW-area local community.

Students needed for senate grad council

According to senate By-Law #8, Section 3, senate graduate council considers all questions relating to the academic quality of graduate studies within the university. All full-time graduate students in the faculty of arts, environmental studies, and science with at least one year remaining in their degree program are eligible to be nominated for the seats. Interested graduate students should e-mail the GSA president at gsapres@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca by this Friday.

Auditions, lectures, exams and fees

Here's an acting job that pays. The 2000 version of Single and Sexy is holding auditions today from 2 to 6 p.m. in the Theatre of the Arts, Modern Languages. "Show up prepared to play. No monologue required." The director is seeking three females, four males, one male improvisational keyboard player -- all to be paid $340 per week -- and a stage manager who will earn $400 per week. Callbacks will be this evening from 7 to 9 p.m. For more information, contact Darlene Spencer at ext. 3672.

From the registrar's office, a reminder that schedules and fee statements for undergraduate students who have pre-registered for the spring term will be mailed out to students' home addresses the week of April 12. Fee payments must be received by the cashiers' office by May 1. Late fees begin May 2. Payments are accepted by mail or by dropping off in one of the four express payment boxes located in Needles Hall.

The English Language Proficiency Exam, an undergraduate rite of passage, will be held tomorrow, April 6 at 7 p.m. in the PAC building.

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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