Eight accounting students have received this year's $2,500 Tax Scholarships from the accounting firm of Deloitte through the Deloitte Centre for Tax Education and Research in UW's accountancy school. A key part of the scholarship application was an essay: "How can tax professionals add value to their clients' business?" Besides Lu Jiang (1A), who didn't make the photo, winners were Donna Craig (4A), Ryan Cavanagh (4B), Sean Murphy (4B), Hans Woo (3A), Amy Chan (2A), Bo Wang (3A) and Jacky Zi Li (2A).

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Walking in a winter wonderland

"During winter, give falls the slip," suggests a flyer distributed by UW's safety office. Directed mostly to staff, it has advice that's suited to students and faculty members as well, about staying upright despite the snow and ice that arrived again this week after the early-fall preview.

Says the flyer: "Watch out for and avoid black ice. Often this occurs when temperatures rise above freezing during the day and drop below freezing at night.

"Do not get caught by surprise — monitor the weather. Campus safety is everyone's responsibility; play your part.

"Think prevention — If you see an icy condition do not hesitate to use salt/sand on the walkways from the bins located throughout the campus. Wear winter footwear, even for short walks. When walking on ice or snow take short steps to keep your centre of balance under you.

"Use extra care when getting in and out of vehicles; parking lots are particularly difficult to maintain between parked vehicles. Use handrails on steps/ramps. Avoid shortcuts. Use salted/sanded and well-lit walkways. Delay use of recently plowed areas as they can be slippery until the salt/sand has taken effect.

"During storms UW's first priority is main road routes to ensure emergency access and then primary walkways. Attention to some walkways and parking lots may not be possible until at least 24 hours after a storm has subsided. Keep clear of snow removal equipment for your safety and to expedite their response to storm conditions.

"During and following winter storms review any access concerns with your supervisor.” Reports of unsafe conditions can go to the plant operations 24-hour phone line at ext. 3–3793.

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Psych research to use 'smart shirts'

A research team will use so-called smart shirts to study the attention spans of people doing everyday tasks and suggest ways to improve safety standards, says a release this week from the university's media relations office.

Daniel Smilek, a professor of psychology, will use the LifeShirt System from VivoMetrics, of Ventura, California, to conduct a new study on human visual attention. The project, entitled A Portable Laboratory for Studying Human Attention in the Real World, recently received a $78,927 grant from the Ontario Research Fund, matching an earlier grant from the Canada Foundation for Innovation.

Smilek's study is among the first to shed light on how human attention operates and fails in everyday situations. He said the technology provides a portable laboratory for studying visual attention. "Despite the clear importance of attention in everyday life, little is known about how human attention operates and fails in real-world situations," he said. "We are excited to undertake this important research on human attention in realistic settings. The information we hope to gain from the research will play a valuable role in the future development of policy regarding safety in several areas that require a high level of direct attention from an individual."

Smilek expects to have the portable LifeShirt and other equipment necessary for the study by the end of the year, with data collection beginning next spring. Publishable results should be available by late fall of 2007.

The work will set a new standard for attention research, says the news release. "It will have significant impact on public policy — for example, safety regulations — and on technology design — for example, human factors engineering."

Although much is known about human attentiveness and its importance to overall health and performance, LifeShirt will enable researchers to conduct experiments in the field, while subjects are engaging in such daily activities as driving a car or working in a state of fatigue. Users wear a lightweight, machine-washable garment with embedded sensors that collect pulmonary, cardiac, posture and activity signals. Other equipment, including tools designed to track subjects' eye movements and focus, will be incorporated into the research design. An electronic diary captures the subjective input of users. All physiological and subject data are correlated over time. The technology makes it possible to study how various human processes work together while dealing with real-world situations, as well as attention in everyday tasks.

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English exam day, and other notes

Tonight brings the English Language Proficiency Examination, for those students who need to write it. And who might that be? Ann Barrett of the Writing Centre rhymes it off: "I am expecting all first year AHS students, all first year Arts or Science students who have 80% or higher in E4U [that's high school English], all first year CFM students, all first year ES students and any upper year students who haven't yet passed." Individuals can choose any of the three times available — 4:00, 5:30 and 7:00 tonight, all in the Physical Activities Complex. "Students should remember to bring their WatCards, pens or pencils, and great ideas," says Barrett, "but no dictionaries (electronic or paper)."

Yesterday's Daily Bulletin briefly mentioned a survey that's being done by the UW faculty association on two key issues: merit assessment (how faculty performance is assessed at salary increase time) and workload. "The FAUW plans to look more closely at faculty workload during the next year or so," association president Roydon Fraser wrote in the group's most recent newsletter. "What effect are the continual across the board budget cuts having on workload? How are new faculty coping with what some call the 'new reality' that they must perform many of the clerical tasks that in the past would have been done by staff, for example, assisting with the typing of papers, assisting with the creation of graphics for papers, assisting with scheduling meetings, etc.? How are departments and faculty coping with changes in class sizes, tutorial support, and lab support? What is the workload impact of changes in research expectations over the past decade or so? Have the opportunities for time to simply 'think' increased, stayed the same, or decreased? . . . If the FAUW can acquire some reliable data then we may be able to more forcefully argue for change where change is desirable."

Students' council, the governing body of the Federation of Students, paid tribute to one of its own before Sunday's regular meeting got under way. Councillors remembered Janet Yip, who was in her second year as a representative of UW engineering students. She died November 29 in Kingston after a brief, sudden illness. "The Federation will greatly miss Janet," says Fed president Michelle Zakrison. The funeral service is scheduled for Saturday at the Ogden Funeral Home, 4164 Sheppard Avenue East, Agincourt (Toronto), with visitation at 11 a.m. and the service at 12 noon. Meanwhile, this announcement comes from another fourth-year student, Brent Tweddle: "I would like to put together a collection of stories/ writings/ artwork/ anything else on the life of Janet Yip and am asking for people to email contributions to janetyipstories@gmail.com. My hope is that this collection can be published in early January for everyone to read (the details are not yet worked out). I would like this collection to focus on celebrating Janet's wonderful life, rather than the recent tragedy. Feel free to send in short stories, long stories, poetry, essays, artwork, quotes, jokes or any other thing you can think of. Anyone can contribute; it doesn't matter if you knew her for 23 years or met her once at a bus-stop."

News from the school of computer science: “Waterloo tied Carnegie Mellon University for top showing among North American universities in the 2007 Computing Research Association’s Outstanding Undergraduate Awards. Four UW students were among those recognized, including runner-up, a finalist and two honourable mentions. The CRA Awards recognize undergraduate students at North American universities who show outstanding research potential in an area of computing research. Waterloo’s own Matei Zaharia was named male runner-up. Zaharia is an Honours Computer Science student, whose advisor is Professor Srinivasan Keshav. Finalist Abninder Litt, whose advisors are Professors Naomi Nishimura and Paul Thagard, is a BMath Computer Science student completing a Cognitive Science option. Honourable mentions went to Jui-Yi Kao, completing his Double Honours in Computer Science and Pure Mathematics with advisor Jeffrey Shallit, and Tyler Tian Lu, completing a BMath with Joint Honours in Combinatorics & Optimization and Computer Science with advisors Alex Lopez-Ortiz and Jeremy Barbay.”

Next offering from UW's Employee Assistance Program is to be a three-part series on "Getting Back to Healthy Weights", offered (no irony here) as lunchtime brown-bag sessions. The first one is scheduled for December 13, which is next Wednesday; the later episodes come January 11 and February 15. Naturally there's more information on the EAP web site.

The staff association has invited its members to apply for a spot as staff representative on the UW Art Gallery Advisory Committee. • The UW Recreation Committee's book club is well under way, and is meeting at noon today to talk about The Hatbox Letters. • Work by designer, painter and jeweller Rolph Scarlett, including industrial design drawings he did in the 1930s for everything from household objects to missiles, is on display until January 14 at the Design at Riverside gallery in the UW Architecture building.

CAR

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