In the warm glow of October

Oh, what a beautiful morning, oh, what a beautiful day — and is there a quota on how many times somebody can observe that the weather is unseasonably warm for this time of year? Some of us are loving it — despite the smog advisory that accompanies the high temperatures — while others are longing for winter, or at least the winds of autumn. I ran into a senior UW official this morning who declared that "I'm tired of summer!" Meanwhile, the UW weather station continues to issue monthly and quarterly summaries, and the refrain is a familiar one: "a hot and dry summer . . . a really hot and dry September. The 30.1 Celsius on the 25th will go down as the warmest fall temperature ever seen. We are now over 200 mm below the average precipitation for this time of the year." And here's one that the statisticians will have trouble with: "We now have 10 years of summer temperatures recorded at the UW weather station and only 2 of them have been below average." (Explanation: the "average" is based on decades of data from before the UW weather station came into existence.)

Okay, then, looking ahead to a colder season: classes for the winter term will begin on Monday, January 7, which means there will be three days (January 2-4) when offices are open and students can be settling in and doing paperwork before heading for the classroom. Most winter term students will be either carrying on from the fall term or returning from a co-op job, but every year there are a handful of students whose university careers begin in January. The admissions office says the deadline to apply for entrance to UW in January 2008 is October 31. For students already part of UW, class enrolment appointments for winter undergraduate courses begin Tuesday on Quest, and open enrolment begins October 22.

"The spring 2008 issue of Alternatives Journal," says a memo from the faculty of environmental studies, "will focus on protecting the lands that surround our urban centres. It will address the issues of how to stop urban sprawl from spilling on to our agricultural land and confiscating our forests. It will consider our need for food security, farm income and the often contentious relationship between agriculture and environment. We’d like to examine the effect of land-use and other government policies on our ability to steward the living landscapes that surround our cities. We’re looking for examples of programs and ideas that have worked in Canada or around the world. We’ll consider interviews with experts. We want to address whether we really need to have access to local food and near urban nature. What is nature’s value? Can cities and countryside co-exist? Alternatives invites submissions for articles dealing with the topic of Saving Near-Urban Landscapes in Canada and around the world. We want thoughtful articles that look for the story beyond the story."

Tuesday is the closing day for the "Smart Start Spin-off Contest", sponsored by the Accelerator Centre and UW's research office, which offers prizes up to $50,000 to help with commercialization of a UW invention.• Fatima Medeiros, a food services assistant at UW sine October 1969, officially retired October 1. • Expect to hear more about a "Thank-You-a-thon" to be held November 10, in which a battalion of student callers will try to reach thousands of UW alumni donors and make other gestures to thank those who have been supporting the university financially.

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Starter grants for 12 researchers

from the UW media relations office

The Ontario ministry of research and innovation has announced $100,000 “early researcher awards” to 12 faculty members at UW. The funding will help establish research programs aimed at, among other things, finding better ways to treat cancer, designing energy sources, and testing water and food. The awards program is intended to help new professors to build their research teams by recruiting graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and research associates.

"The awards will make it easier for the university to recruit promising young researchers for our research teams," says George Dixon, UW's vice-president (university research). "Their discoveries will ensure that Ontario can compete in the marketplace of ideas." The award recipients:

Qing-Bin Lu, physics and astronomy, seeks to improve the treatment of more challenging types of cancers by investigating how anti-cancer drugs work at a molecular level. Using ultrafast biophotonics — a technology that works like a high speed camera capturing real-time observations of cancer drugs at work — he expects to gauge the effectiveness of existing treatments and develop new and more effective cancer therapies.

Ehab El-Saadany, electrical and computer engineering, believes increases in electrical energy production will be achieved through widespread installation of distributed generation — in other words, decentralized energy sources. The focus of his research is to develop interfacing and control algorithms to increase distributed generation deployment into current distribution systems.

Carolyn Ren, mechanical and mechatronics engineering, aims to develop a palm-sized, battery-powered lab-on-a-chip device for use in improving water and food quality control. Not only would it produce results on the spot, the device would cut the cost of testing for bacterial outbreaks. At present, food and water control requires expensive equipment and costly sample transport from the field to the lab.

Daniel Smilek, psychology, studies how two or more individuals share their attention while engaging in health and safety tasks. This collaboration among individuals is a critical component in many health- and safety-related situations. His research will lead to new regulations and procedures for improving safety and performance in collaborative settings.

Hans De Sterck, applied mathematics, probes efficient algorithms and software for scientific research on large distributed computing systems. Using Ontario's advanced computer networks, De Sterck will study how planets become hospitable to the development of early life forms and the origins of primitive ribonucleic acid (RNA) metabolisms. These investigations require algorithms that efficiently use computational resources — a focus of De Sterck's research.

Ehsan Toyserkani, mechanical and mechatronics engineering, develops new leading-edge technology for the fabrication of “smart” tools. These tools, with embedded fibre optic sensors, are produced by advanced laser solid free-form fabrication techniques. Featuring superior mechanical and physical properties, they can be deployed for sensing applications such as simultaneous monitoring of stress and temperature in oil/gas well drilling bits.

Thorsten Hesjedal, electrical and computer engineering, explores molecular beam epitaxy, a key method for designing quantum devices. Hesjedal will establish materials growth capabilities for spintronics and quantum computing applications to advance research in quantum computing. The importance of quantum computing applications increases as technology progresses and the amount of information grows.

Jochen Konemann, combinatorics and optimization, develops efficient algorithms for hard optimization problems. His work focuses on network design, a sub-area of combinatorial optimization crucial to the information technology sector, among others.

Dayan Ban, electrical and computer engineering, investigates novel and compact semiconductor-based terahertz sources. Terahertz (a unit of electromagnetic wave frequency equal to one trillion hertz) technology has been identified as a vital source of semiconductor-based laser imaging applications. These complex sources could have a profound impact in the areas of pollution monitoring, biological spectroscopy, medical imaging, security and high-speed optical wireless communications.

Brian Ingalls, applied mathematics, researches tools to develop and analyze models of biological phenomena in order to investigate cellular behaviour. His work will result in improved disease treatments, benefiting the areas of agriculture, bioremediation and bioprocess engineering. Systems biology seeks to understand the structure and function of the complex biochemical networks revealed within the cell.

Brendan McConkey, biology, studies the fundamental processes involved in the functioning of the cell, especially the interactions involved in regulating cell division and replication. His research will lead to applications in medicine, agriculture and biotechnology. Predicting how a cell responds to changes in environmental conditions or exposure to a drug are critical questions.

Arne Storjohann, computer science, probes new algorithms that will make more efficient use of computer time and memory. Algorithms, a well-defined set of rules, are used to solve large-scale problems. His work will provide rigorously tested computer algebra software to researchers and practitioners in the mathematical, scientific and engineering communities.

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It's Thanksgiving . . . and Oktoberfest

There may not be as much of a UW presence as usual in Monday’s Oktoberfest parade through Kitchener-Waterloo, an annual event that’s telecast Canada-wide on CTV. The Midnight Sun solar car, which has appeared in past parades, is currently in Australia, and the Formula SAE car won’t be doing the Oktoberfest thing this year, says Ken Yuen, team advisor for UW Formula Motorsports. The Alternative Fuels Team and Mini-Baja group also aren't expected to participate as they have sometimes done in the past.

With or without UW involvement, the parade — which includes floats, bands, clowns and local and imported culture — begins at 8:30 Monday in downtown Waterloo and heads south along King Street into central Kitchener. It's a Thanksgiving Day fixture in K-W and across the country, a highlight of the nine-day Oktoberfest, "Canada's Great Bavarian Festival". This year's is the 39th annual Oktoberfest for this community, and starts with ceremonies in downtown Kitchener at noontime today.

Oktoberfest includes a number of special events aimed at families, including Saturday morning's pancake breakfast and barrel race in central Waterloo, and the "Oktoberfest Idol" competition in Kitchener both weekend days. It also brought last night’s Women of the Year Award celebrations, and the crowning of York University student Nicole Stuber as “Miss Oktoberfest” last week.

But the heart of the festival is the "festhalls" scattered across the city (and open varying days), with German music, German food and a certain German beverage in abundance. Missing from this year’s list of festhalls is "Seagram Haus", otherwise the gymnasium at University Stadium, which was an Oktoberfest venue last year.

Meanwhile, the campus will be quiet for the next three days as Thanksgiving is observed. Monday, October 8, is a holiday — UW offices and most services will be closed, and classes will not be held. The Physical Activities Complex and Columbia Icefield are closed Monday (gyms are open 9:00 to 5:30 on Saturday and Sunday, arena closed all weekend). The Dana Porter and Davis Centre libraries will be open normal hours on Saturday and Sunday, and from noon to 6 p.m. on Monday. Campus-wide, it's back to normal on Tuesday morning.

As always, the UW police (519-888-4911) will be at work, the Student Life Centre (519–888-4434) will be open, and the central plant will monitor UW's buildings (maintenance emergencies, ext. 33793).

By the way, we’re all indebted to the mathematics student newsletter for pointing out that JobMine thinks Thanksgiving is an event for which students can register (and as of yesterday afternoon, 17 keeners had done so).

Finally . . . with the beginning of Oktoberfest, there can be more than the usual number of too-merry drivers on the road; let us celebrate with moderation and drive with care. And at Thanksgiving may we be, as the old grace says, truly thankful. The sorrows and burdens come easily enough to mind, but still, we can remind ourselves, we in Canada and in Waterloo have much for which we can give thanks.

CAR

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