UWAFT’s hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle on view

Here’s a chance to see one of UW’s student-designed automotive projects in action. The University of Waterloo Alternative Fuels Team (UWAFT) is launching their final year of the international competition, Challenge X: Crossover to Sustainable Mobility, by holding a “Ride and Drive” event this Friday. “The team has built one of Canada’s first hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles and is the first university in the world to successfully build a fuel-cell vehicle,” says their press release. “Members of the media, leaders in industry and academia, team sponsors, and the general public are invited to this event, where individuals will have a chance to test-drive our hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle. It will also be an opportunity to learn more about the emerging hydrogen fuel-cell technology and how it might eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels.”

UWAFT was the only Canadian entry in the North America-wide, multi-year Challenge X competition, a program that challenged university teams to re-engineer a Chevrolet Equinox for increased fuel economy and lower emissions. In the first year of the competition, the UW team of mainly engineering students had a stunning success, taking top honours in most categories and placing first overall. Here are stories on how the team did in the competition this year, last year, and in 2005.

The Ride and Drive takes place on Friday, 9 a.m. – 4 p.m., in Parking Lot C, south of University Avenue and west of Seagram Drive. President David Johnston and Adel Sedra, the dean of engineering, will deliver the keynote address at 11 a.m.; a free barbecue lunch follows from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.

If you plan to go and want to drive the vehicle, phone 519-888-4567, ext. 33863 to book a test-drive time slot. For other information, call team representative James Goh at 519-729-7747.

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Sabbaticals: from the Ptolemies to modern war

Here’s a list of more UW faculty members who will begin sabbatical leaves on September 1, 2007. The descriptions of their sabbatical plans are taken from material submitted to the university’s board of governors.

Sheila Ager, classical studies (twelve months): “I intend to use this sabbatical leave chiefly to advance my research in two main areas: to complete ongoing projects (articles) in the area of Ptolemaic (Hellenistic Egyptian) history; to further research recently undertaken in the application of contemporary political science theory to international relations in antiquity (publication ultimately as a series of articles or possibly a monograph).”

Z. Y. (Jeff) Chen, physics (twelve months): “Full-time research into topics in biological physics, by using theoretical and computational techniques.”

Lori Curtis, economics (six months): “My research will examine the consequences of recent social policy changes, particularly in EI and SA, on the health of women at risk of long-term low income and social exclusion. The research will take place at the University of Waterloo; Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge, UK; and Department of Economics, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia.”

James Rush, kinesiology (six months): “Pursuit of independent and collaborative research activities including short research trips to laboratories of collaborators in Canada and abroad for the purposes of acquisition of new skills, and collaborative research writing projects. Preparation of research grants for new initiatives in cardiovascular research. Preparation of manuscripts and reports from ongoing research projects for publications.”

Penny Haxell, combinatorics and optimization (twelve months): “I plan to spend my sabbatical leave making research visits (1-3 months each) to a number of colleagues, as well as attending conferences. The joint projects with these colleagues include work on transversals, hypergraph regularity, and network protocols.”

William Moul, political science (six months): “I plan to study disputes between states (1816-2000), specifically those between states not in the Great Powers ranks. This involves assessments of balances of power and statistical analyses of arguments about incidence and deadlines of war. The final task is to combine the proposed work with earlier work on Great Powers to make a simple, empirically solid explanation of all interstate war.”

Trien Nguyen, economics (twelve months): “I plan to divide the leave into three parts: revise and resubmit three research papers for publication, work on three in-progress projects to turn them into papers at submission stage, and do some conference travels to renew research contacts, explore new territories with three new projects, and revise graduate lecture notes into textbook form.”

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Internet service disrupted on campus; over now

People at the University of Waterloo experienced computer network disruptions twice within the last week. The outages left people on campus without access to many off-campus websites for several hours, although some people off campus could still connect to UW, depending on which Internet service providers they used.

The first outage lasted from Thursday, August 16 at about 9:30 p.m. until 4 p.m. on Friday; the second lasted from 8 a.m. to 11:15 a.m. yesterday, August 21.

“We apologize for the inconvenience caused by these outages,” says Paul Snyder of IST, while noting that both disruptions originated in ORION (Ontario Research and Innovation Optical Network), the university's Internet service provider. “ORION gives us access to other research institutions and to the Cogent network for non-research sites,” he says.

“While ORION continued to function during the outages, connection to the Cogent network was disrupted. This resulted in a loss of connectivity to most non-research sites. Some Internet service providers, such as Rogers Yahoo! Hi-Speed Internet, maintain connectivity to ORION, so connections to the university from these sites was not affected. Others, for example Bell Sympatico, depend on the Cogent connection and were disrupted.

“We are seeking an explanation from ORION of exactly what caused the problem and details on what they will do to prevent a recurrence.”

CPA staff

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