FUN STUFF!

• New Spice — Study like a scholar, scholar
• Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the earth yet?
• pipl.com
• What does Facebook publish about you and your friends?

• For bibliographies: various style guides and the Landmark Citation Machine.
• RefWorks site (Login) can help you manage your footnotes & bibliography on the web. Easy to use, interfaces directly with MS Word to create footnotes & bibliographies
• FAQ and Instructions for various databases

• For off campus use, get the York group code here.

• Key points:
  • Don’t forget to install Write-n-Cite on your PC.  It’s in the Tools menu
  • Also don’t forget to move items out of the “Last Imported” folder into the folder you create for your course

• Scientific publication cycle
• Peer review: researchers validating each others work before publication
• Kinds of documents:
  • patents: government granted license to an invention
  • standards: agreed upon methodology: ie 802.11
  • journals: research results presented in a periodical/magazine. Peer reviewed.
  • trade literature: discipline-specific magazines. Not Peer Reviewed.
  • conference proceedings: research results presented at a meeting. Often peer reviewed, but not always.
  • technical report: description of a solution to a specific problem. Not peer reviewed.
  • books
    • reference: encyclopedias, tables, data collections, properties
    • manuals: lab methods, programming languages, operating systems
    • monographs: general topics
  • technical specifications: how a device or component works, ie circuit diagrams
• If you’re not sure how to get started on your project, come to Steacie.

My topic: cars that drive, navigate and park themselves!

• intelligent vehicles & automated highways

Plan B: Ground penetrating radar for a Mars mission.

Keywords for searching on these topics, try restricting to Steacie Stacks only:

• General Design
  • Title search on Design
  • keywords:
    • industrial and design
    • engineering design
  • Key Book: How products are made : an illustrated guide to product manufacturing – TS 146 H67 — ref section
  • General Engineering keywords:
    • transportation engineering
    • civil engineering
    • electrical engineering
    • mechanical engineering
    • industrial engineering
    • aerospace engineering
• Materials
  • Try a search on “materials and ” some other keyword
  • Key book: Handbook of materials selection — TA 403.4 H368 ref section
  • Key book: Encyclopedia of materials : science and technology — TA 402 E53 2001 Ref section
• Ergonomics
  • Keywords:
    • human factors
    • anthropometry
    • human engineering
    • ergonomics
  • Key book: The measure of man and woman : human factors in design – TA 166 M342 2002 — ref section
  • Key book: International encyclopedia of ergonomics and human factors – TA 166 I556 2001 — ref section
• Health and Safety
  • Try searching on “health and safety” limited to Steacie
  • Keywords:
    • safety and engineering
    • industrial safety
    • fire and (prevention or safety)
    • accidents and (prevention or safety)
• Environmental Factors
  • Keywords:
    • environmental impact assessment (most books in Scott Library)
    • environmental engineering
• Engineering Failure
  • keywords:
    • forensic engineering
    • building failures
    • system failures
    • materials defects
    • technology and risk assessment
    • reliability and engineering
    • emergency management

• A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a government to an inven tor or applicant for a limited amount of time. (Wikipedia)
• Google Patent Search — beware it’s beta!
• Esp@cenet — European patent office, good overall search, international coverage, full text
• USPTO with search here. (Steacie patent page)
• Canadian Patents Database

• Helps get up to speed on a topic
• Do a search in The York Catalogue:
  • by title: Photovoltaic solar energy generation
  • by author: Goetzberger A
  • by journal title: Scientific American
  • by subject:
    • vehicle and navigation
    • intelligent vehicle
    • automotive and sensors
    • intelligent and transportation
• Google Books Search — can be helpful in finding books for more obscure topics or books that have significant sections that are useful.
• Some helpful books for this assignment:
  • Wiley Encyclopedia of EEE — TK 9 W55 1999 ref section

There are a couple of ebooks packages that are relevant to engineering

• Books 24×7 Engineering Pro — massive engineering ebook database, something for every project
• Safari — nearly 200 technology ebooks on software, operating systems, programming languages
• Synthesis — more advanced ebooks on topics like biomedical engineering, antennas, image processing
• SPIE Digital Library — ebooks and ejournals in optical engineering, photonics, sensors and related fields
• Knovel eBooks –  reference & tabular information, good for calculations.  Many of the tables & formulas are interactive

• Journal & conference articles give cutting edge, peer reviewed information on most topics
• Some searches:
  • automated highways
  • intelligent vehicle
  • automatic car sensor
  • car navigation gps
  • car sensor navigation
  • car sensor collision
  • car sensor parking
  • automobile navigation automatic

• IEEE Xplore — general engineering full text database
• AIAA Electronic Library — technical articles on space engineering
• Scholars Portal journals — good general source for mostly full text articles. Choose Technology Option
• SPIE Digital Library — ebooks and ejournal in optical engineering, photonics, sensors and related fields
• ABI/Inform and Business Source Premier — business databases, mostly full text. Both have terrific coverage of scitech issues
• NASA Technical Reports Server — great resource on NASA missions, not everything is available in full text
• Science.gov — search portal for the US Government
• Engineering Village (with Inspec & Compendex): advanced article search engine
• Canadian Newsstand & Lexis Nexis Academic– full text of many Canadian & international newspapers, good for consumer news or current case studies.

• A standard is a set of language or protocol rules serving as a rallying point, as a base for
  independent agents to communicate together without a specific and a priori agreement. (W3C)
• Wikipedia definition of Standardization
• Some standards organizations offer their standards for free, others require payment
• IEEE standards for electronics — great resource, lots of standards for anything to do with electricity
• International Telecommunications Union standards
  
• Many other standards organizations listed here.

• Wikipedia: a treasure trove of technical information, created by a commuity. Not edited or reviewed, so may not be complete or accurate. Tech topics tend to be pretty good.
• Using Google and Google Scholaras a scholarly research tool:
  • example: wireless cellphone antennas
  • strategy: find good portal sites
  • Strategy: Scholar is still in beta so it’s still incomplete
  • strategy: make sure you know exactly who produced the content and why
  • strategy: good source of product specs

Office: Steacie 102H
Email: sshujah@yorku.ca

Steacie also has a page on Facebook — become a fan!

Fun Stuff!

• New Spice — Study like a scholar, scholar
• Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the earth yet?
• pipl.com
• What does Facebook publish about you and your friends?

• Try this: Coolest thing ever Firefox extension call Libx
  • a cool way to search Scholarsportal article database
• RefWorks site (Login) can help you manage your footnotes & bibliography on the web. Easy to use, interfaces directly with MS Word to create footnotes & bibliographies
• For off campus use, get the York group code here.
• FAQ and Instructions for various databases
• RefWorks Tutorial
• For bibliographies: various style guides and the Landmark Citation Machine and NCSU Citation Builder.
• Scientific publication cycle
• Academic Integrity & Plagiarism web site and Quiz.

• Need to use Passport York or bar code number & PIN from library card to authenticate as a York user
• Information here on logging in
• Remember: Use the library web page or this blog post for the link as it will prompt for login

• Peer review: researchers validating each others work before publication
• Kinds of documents:
  • patents: government granted license to an invention
  • standards: agreed upon methodology: ie 802.11
  • journals: research results presented in a periodical/magazine. Peer reviewed.
  • trade literature: discipline-specific magazines. Not Peer Reviewed.
  • conference proceedings: research results presented at a meeting. Often peer reviewed, but not always.
  • technical report: description of a solution to a specific problem. Not peer reviewed.
  • books
    • reference: encyclopedias, tables, data collections, properties
    • manuals: lab methods, programming languages, operating systems
    • monographs: general topics
  • technical specifications: how a device or component works, ie circuit diagrams
• If you’re not sure how to get started on your project, come to Steacie.
• My Topic: 2007, ground penetrating radar
  

Keywords for searching on these topics, try restricting to Steacie Stacks only:

• General Design
  • Title search on Design
  • keywords:
    • industrial and design
    • engineering design
  • Key Book: How products are made : an illustrated guide to product manufacturing — TS 146 H67 — ref section
  • General Engineering keywords:
    • transportation engineering
    • civil engineering
    • electrical engineering
    • mechanical engineering
    • industrial engineering
    • aerospace engineering
• Materials
  • Try a search on “materials and ” some other keyword
  • Key book: Handbook of materials selection — TA 403.4 H368 ref section
  • Key book: Encyclopedia of materials : science and technology — TA 402 E53 2001 Ref section
• Ergonomics
  • Keywords:
    • human factors
    • anthropometry
    • human engineering
    • ergonomics
  • Key book: The measure of man and woman : human factors in design – TA 166 M342 2002 — ref section
  • Key book: International encyclopedia of ergonomics and human factors — TA 166 I556 2001 — ref section
• Health and Safety
  • Try searching on “health and safety” limited to Steacie
  • Keywords:
    • safety and engineering
    • industrial safety
    • fire and (prevention or safety)
    • accidents and (prevention or safety)
• Environmental Factors
  • Keywords:
    • environmental impact assessment (most books in Scott Library)
    • environmental engineering
• Engineering Failure
  • keywords:
    • forensic engineering
    • building failures
    • system failures
    • materials defects
    • technology and risk assessment
    • reliability and engineering
    • emergency management

• A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a government to an inventor or applicant for a limited amount of time. (Wikipedia)
• USPTO with search here. (Steacie patent page)
• Esp@cenet– European patent office.  Good international coverage, easily accessed full text
  • WikiPatents — great free patent site, with lots of info and interactions. Only covers since 1975. Free registration required for advanced features.
  • Google Patent Search — warning, it’s in beta and the database is incomplete
  • Freepatentsonline — requires free login to see all the images
  • Peer to Patent project: community patent review, anyone can contribute
• Canadian Patents Database

• Helps get up to speed on a topic
• Do a search in The York Catalogue:
  • by title: Photovoltaic solar energy generation
  • by author: Goetzberger A
  • by journal title: Scientific American
  • by keyword:
    • ground penetrating radar
    • ground penetrating radar and metal and detection
    • ground penetrating radar and (landmine or land mine)
    • signal processing and music
    • signal processing and audio
    • sound and engineering
    • music and (technology or data processing)
• Try Google Books Searchwith the Libx extension
  • music signal processing
  • mono stereo conversion signal processing
• Some other helpful books:
  • Wiley Encyclopedia of EEE — TK 9 W55 1999 ref section

There are a couple of ebooks packages that are relevant to engineering

Keywords:

• ground penetrating radar
• landmine and detection and radar
• “ground penetrating radar”

• Safari — nearly 200 technology ebooks on software, operating systems, programming languages
• Synthesis — more advanced ebooks on topics like biomedical engineering, antennas, image processing
• Books24x7 — EngineeringPro & ITPro
• Scolars Portal eBooks — a great big pile of ebooks
• Knovel — reference/property data.  Also has live equations and interative graphs
• SPIE Digital Library — has all the SPIE books, proceedings and journals in full text

• Journal & conference articles give cutting edge, peer reviewed information on most topics
• Some searches:
  • ground penetrating radar and antenna
  • landmine and detection and radar
  • mono and stereo and conversion
  • audio and conversion
  • signal processing and (sound or audio) and mono and stereo

• Scholars Portal Journals: good mix of advanced articles with full text
• Engineering Village (with Inspec & Compendex): advanced article search engine
• IEEE Xplore — general engineering full text database
• SPIE Digital Library – lots of engineering content, optics, sensors, etc.
• AIAA – full text articles in space engineering
  • check “Search My Publications & Papers” to make sure you only get what we subscribe to
• NASA Technical Reports Server — great resource on NASA missions, not everything is available in full text
• Science.gov — search portal for the US Government
• Web of Science & Scopus — good general science & engineering with links to full text
• Expanded Academic and Research Library- good general source, mostly full text
• GeoRef – good for geomatics
• ABI/Inform and Business Source Premier — business databases, mostly full
  text. Both have terrific coverage of scitech issues from a business perspective

• A standard is a set of language or protocol rules serving as a rallying point, as a base for
  independent agents to communicate together without a specific and a priori agreement. (W3C)
• Wikipedia definition of Standardization
• Some standards organizations offer their standards for free, others require payment
• IEEE standards for electronics — great resource, lots of standards for anything to do with electricity
• International Telecommunications Union standards
  
• Many other standards organizations listed here.

• Wikipedia: a treasure trove of technical information, created by a commuity. Not edited or reviewed, so may not be complete or accurate. Tech topics tend to be pretty good.
• techXtra –Google for engineering, high quality sites, not all articles freely available
• Using Google and Google Scholaras a scholarly research tool:
  • example: wireless cellphone antennas
  • strategy: find good portal sites
  • Strategy: Scholar is still in beta so it’s still incomplete
  • strategy: make sure you know exactly who produced the content and why
  • strategy: good source of product specs

Office: Steacie 102H
Email: sshujah@yorku.ca
Phone: 416-736-2100 x33945

Steacie also has a page on Facebook — become a fan!

Background info and FREE Citation Management Software

• For books and reports that York Libraries don’t have:
  • use RACER!

• Try this: Coolest thing ever Firefox extension call Libx
  • a cool way to search Scholarsportal article database
• RefWorks site (Login) can help you manage your footnotes & bibliography on the web. Easy to use, interfaces directly with MS Word to create footnotes & bibliographies
• For off campus use, get the York group code here.
• FAQ and Instructions for various databases
• RefWorks Tutorial
• For bibliographies: various style guides and the Landmark Citation Machine.
• Scientific publication cycle
• Academic Integrity & Plagiarism web site and Quiz.

• Peer review: researchers validating each others work before publication
• Kinds of documents:
  • patents: government granted license to an invention
  • standards: agreed upon methodology: ie 802.11
  • journals: research results presented in a periodical/magazine. Peer reviewed.
  • trade literature: discipline-specific magazines. Not Peer Reviewed.
  • conference proceedings: research results presented at a meeting. Often peer reviewed, but not always.
  • technical report: description of a solution to a specific problem. Not peer reviewed.
  • books
    • reference: encyclopedias, tables, data collections, properties
    • manuals: lab methods, programming languages, operating systems
    • monographs: general topics
  • technical specifications: how a device or component works, ie circuit diagrams
• If you’re not sure how to get started on your project, come to Steacie.
• My Topic: Pick one from last year.

Keywords for searching on these topics, try restricting to Steacie Stacks only:

• General Design
  • Title search on Design
  • keywords:
    • industrial and design
    • engineering design
  • Key Book: How products are made : an illustrated guide to product manufacturing — TS 146 H67 — ref section
  • General Engineering keywords:
    • transportation engineering
    • civil engineering
    • electrical engineering
    • mechanical engineering
    • industrial engineering
    • aerospace engineering
• Materials
  • Try a search on “materials and ” some other keyword
  • Key book: Handbook of materials selection — TA 403.4 H368 ref section
  • Key book: Encyclopedia of materials : science and technology — TA 402 E53 2001 Ref section
• Ergonomics
  • Keywords:
    • human factors
    • anthropometry
    • human engineering
    • ergonomics
  • Key book: The measure of man and woman : human factors in design – TA 166 M342 2002 — ref section
  • Key book: International encyclopedia of ergonomics and human factors — TA 166 I556 2001 — ref section
• Health and Safety
  • Try searching on “health and safety” limited to Steacie
  • Keywords:
    • safety and engineering
    • industrial safety
    • fire and (prevention or safety)
    • accidents and (prevention or safety)
• Environmental Factors
  • Keywords:
    • environmental impact assessment (most books in Scott Library)
    • environmental engineering
• Engineering Failure
  • keywords:
    • forensic engineering
    • building failures
    • system failures
    • materials defects
    • technology and risk assessment
    • reliability and engineering
    • emergency management

• A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a government to an inventor or applicant for a limited amount of time. (Wikipedia)
• USPTO with search here. (Steacie patent page)
  • WikiPatents — great free patent site, with lots of info and interactions. Only covers since 1975. Free registration required for advanced features.
  • Google Patent Search — warning, it’s in beta and the database is incomplete
  • Freepatentsonline — requires free login to see all the images
  • Peer to Patent project: community patent review, anyone can contribute
• Canadian Patents Database

• Helps get up to speed on a topic
• Do a search in The York Catalogue:
  • by title: Photovoltaic solar energy generation
  • by author: Goetzberger A
  • by journal title: Scientific American
  • by keyword:
    • satellite and meteorology
    • satellite and climate
    • climate and sensing
• Try Google Books Search with the Libx extension
• Some other helpful books:
  • Wiley Encyclopedia of EEE — TK 9 W55 1999 ref section
  • Check the TL section in the Reference stacks for Janes & other space books.

• Try this: Coolest thing ever Firefox extension call Libx
  • a cool way to search Scholarsportal article database
• RefWorks site (Login) can help you manage your footnotes & bibliography on the web. Easy to use, interfaces directly with MS Word to create footnotes & bibliographies
• For off campus use, get the York group code here.
• FAQ and Instructions for various databases
• RefWorks Tutorial
• For bibliographies: various style guides and the Landmark Citation Machine.
• Scientific publication cycle
• Academic Integrity & Plagiarism web site and Quiz.

• Peer review: researchers validating each others work before publication
• Kinds of documents:
  • patents: government granted license to an invention
  • standards: agreed upon methodology: ie 802.11
  • journals: research results presented in a periodical/magazine. Peer reviewed.
  • trade literature: discipline-specific magazines. Not Peer Reviewed.
  • conference proceedings: research results presented at a meeting. Often peer reviewed, but not always.
  • technical report: description of a solution to a specific problem. Not peer reviewed.
  • books
    • reference: encyclopedias, tables, data collections, properties
    • manuals: lab methods, programming languages, operating systems
    • monographs: general topics
  • technical specifications: how a device or component works, ie circuit diagrams

Keywords for searching on these topics, try restricting to Steacie Stacks only:

• General Design
  • Title search on Design
  • keywords:
    • industrial and design
    • engineering design
  • Key Book: How products are made : an illustrated guide to product manufacturing — TS 146 H67 — ref section
  • General Engineering keywords:
    • transportation engineering
    • civil engineering
    • electrical engineering
    • mechanical engineering
    • industrial engineering
    • aerospace engineering
• Materials
  • Try a search on “materials and ” some other keyword
  • Key book: Handbook of materials selection — TA 403.4 H368 ref section
  • Key book: Encyclopedia of materials : science and technology — TA 402 E53 2001 Ref section
• Ergonomics
  • Keywords:
    • human factors
    • anthropometry
    • human engineering
    • ergonomics
  • Key book: The measure of man and woman : human factors in design – TA 166 M342 2002 — ref section
  • Key book: International encyclopedia of ergonomics and human factors — TA 166 I556 2001 — ref section
• Health and Safety
  • Try searching on “health and safety” limited to Steacie
  • Keywords:
    • safety and engineering
    • industrial safety
    • fire and (prevention or safety)
    • accidents and (prevention or safety)
• Environmental Factors
  • Keywords:
    • environmental impact assessment (most books in Scott Library)
    • environmental engineering
• Engineering Failure
  • keywords:
    • forensic engineering
    • building failures
    • system failures
    • materials defects
    • technology and risk assessment
    • reliability and engineering
    • emergency management

• A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a government to an inventor or applicant for a limited amount of time. (Wikipedia)
• USPTO with search here. (Steacie patent page)
  • WikiPatents — great free patent site, with lots of info and interactions. Only covers since 1975. Free registration required for advanced features.
  • Google Patent Search — warning, it’s in beta and the database is incomplete
  • Freepatentsonline — requires free login to see all the images
  • Peer to Patent project: community patent review, anyone can contribute
• Canadian Patents Database

• Helps get up to speed on a topic
• Do a search in The York Catalogue:
  • by title: Photovoltaic solar energy generation
  • by author: Goetzberger A
  • by journal title: Scientific American
  • by keyword:
    • satellite and meteorology
    • satellite and climate
    • climate and sensing
• Try Google Books Search with the Libx extension
• Some other helpful books:
  • Wiley Encyclopedia of EEE — TK 9 W55 1999 ref section

There are a couple of ebooks packages that are relevant to engineering

Keywords:

• Safari — nearly 200 technology ebooks on software, operating systems, programming languages
• Synthesis — more advanced ebooks on topics like biomedical engineering, antennas, image processing
• Books24x7 — EngineeringPro & ITPro

• Journal & conference articles give cutting edge, peer reviewed information on most topics
• Some searches:
  • climate and sensing and satellite

• Expanded Academic and Research Library- good general source, mostly full text
• Scholars Portal search: good mix of advanced articles with full text
• Engineering Village (with Inspec & Compendex): advanced article search engine
• IEEE Xplore — general engineering full text database
• NASA Technical Reports Server — great resource on NASA missions, not everything is available in full text
• Science.gov — search portal for the US Government
• Web of Science — good general science & engineering
• GeoRef – good for geomatics
• ABI/Inform and Business Source Premier — business databases, mostly full
  text. Both have terrific coverage of scitech issues from a business perspective

• Wikipedia: a treasure trove of technical information, created by a commuity. Not edited or reviewed, so may not be complete or accurate. Tech topics tend to be pretty good.
• techXtra –Google for engineering, high quality sites, not all articles freely available
• Using Google and Google Scholar as a scholarly research tool:
  • example: wireless cellphone antennas
  • strategy: find good portal sites
  • Strategy: Scholar is still in beta so it’s still incomplete
  • strategy: make sure you know exactly who produced the content and why
  • strategy: good source of product specs

Office: Steacie 102H
Email: jdupuis@yorku.ca
MSN IM: john_dupuis@hotmail.com
You can also friend me or send me a message on Facebook

And on FriendFeed.

Steacie also has a page on Facebook — become a fan!

York University will throw open the doors of its space science and engineering facilities to hundreds of future astronauts on Saturday, May 10. York is participating in Science Rendezvous, a new full day event that is free and open to the public. During Science Rendezvous, leading science and technology institutes, including York, will offer free tours, events, demonstrations and lectures. Participants can register for the day and pick up a program in the lobby of the Computer Science & Engineering Building. Registration opens at 12:30pm.

“York University’s event will be very unique,” says Elissa Strome, research officer for the Faculty of Science & Engineering. “We are opening the doors to our world-renowned space science and engineering facilites to showcase them to Canada’s future astronauts and space scientists.”

York-specific information here.

At least that’s the thrust of a recent article in the National Post.

Some background:

But even as Canada celebrates another milestone in its nearly 50-year history of involvement in space, some critics are wondering: Will it be the last?

The shuttle Endeavour will carry the Canadian-built Dextre module — the nickname given to the Special Purpose Dextrous Manipulator, the “hand” for the massive Canadarm2 robotic arm — to the International Space tation, the last component in Canada’s contribution to the 16-nation project.

The arm, an 18-metre-long, remotely controlled and highly complex construction crane, was installed in 2001 while the Mobile Base System, the “shoulder” for the Canadarm, was brought up to the space station in 2002.

York Space Engineering prof. Brendan Quine is quoted:

Ben Quine, a professor at York University’s Earth and Space Engineering department, said the sudden departure of the former president was cause for concern. “That was somewhat alarming. He had only really been in the job for a few months and it came as a surprise when he left … It was not a good sign.”

Prof. Quine says Dextre’s arrival in orbit may well mark the beginning of a new era in Canada’s role in space exploration, but it is not yet clear what that role will be.

“Canadarm was a great Canadian success story,” he says. “But to some extent, we’ve lost our way in the space industry in this country … I think we’ve got to be really careful about our direction in the future. We need a viable space industry and a vibrant research and development sector.”

*snip*

“Governments don’t typically have much interest in a big space program in Canada,” he says. “But this is an export market that generates wealth in our economy … [and] it’s a high-tech industry.”

Prof. Quine says space and related industries worldwide are worth about $200-billion a year, and that Canada’s share of that business — about $2-billion a year — could dry up without a greater commitment from Ottawa to support it. “If we don’t support our industry, we risk losing our share of that market,” he says. “And it’s a market that’s going to get extremely competitive in the next few years with India and China moving into space.

“We really have to articulate more clearly to governments why it’s important for Canada to fund space exploration … We need to tell our political leaders about the huge benefits space can bring Canada.”

You tell ‘em, Ben!

York computer science Professor Eshrat Arjomandi can remember a time when she was one of only a handful of women studying computer science at university. It was a lonely road, filled with challenging and grueling course work, hours of study and the isolation that comes from being a female in a male-dominated profession. It was with this experience in mind that Arjomandi, together with colleagues in York’s Faculty of Science & Engineering, formed a small ad-hoc group in 2004 with a mission to support and mentor a growing number of young women choosing to study computer science and engineering at York.

It’s a great article about some great women doing some really important work. Here’s a nice photo of some of the students (Anna Topol, Foroohar Foroozan, Mary Kuruvilla and Neha Durwas) along with Profs. Melanie Baljko, Eshrat Arjomandi and Natalija Vlajic. (And don’t forget Prof. Baljko’s daughter Erma).

Also of interest, the Steacie Spotlight this month is books on Women in Science. We have highlighted over 30 books on that theme, ranging from Grace Hopper to Lise Meitner and women astronauts and everything in between. Check it out (and check out the books too) on the Steacie New Books shelves.

Can you tell us about coverage? What exactly launched today? What’s the difference in the platform between VE China and VE everywhere else?

The China release demonstrates our success in deploying our first VE data center remotely. We now have an in-country data center offering the better system performance and greater user experiences. This distributed mapping architecture allows us to grow the international markets in a scalable way. In this first release, VE China covers both tier-1 and tier-2 total 114 cities with very rich local contents (millions of POI/YP). In addition to most VE features in USA, China release offers the public transit feature for bus and train commuters. We understand that this is the most demanding feature for China users when concerning maps. We cannot afford not having this feature even for v1 release

According to Stan Shapson, York VP Research and Innovation:

Governments do a lot of investment in basic reserach, which is critically important in the long term. But government also want to look at opportunities for earlier returns on investment. That’s why it’s important for a university to take applied research and, in some cases, graduate training and experience out into the local community.”

Great article.  Check it out.

Instead of counting on polluters to report their own emissions, York space scientist Brendan Quine has developed a sneaky pollution spy – a tiny gadget that works in space, reported The Globe and Mail Nov. 3. Called the Argus microspectrometer, it picks up on the chemical signatures of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that cause global warming. It will launch into orbit next month on board a microsatellite test-driving tiny instruments. Most tools sent into space cost millions and wind up as nothing more than pollution themselves: giant pieces of obsolete trash orbiting the Earth. Argus costs about $75,000 and can fit in the palm of your hand – making it a cost-effective example of sustainable space instrumentation.

• With Fear and Wonder in Its Wake, Sputnik Lifted Us Into the Future
• When the Space Age Blasted Off, Pop Culture Followed
• New Challengers Emerge, Threatening to Take the Lead
• One Giant Leap, Followed by Decades of Baby Steps
• Voices: 10/4/57 (interviews with scientists)

BTW, the Tuesday New York Times always has a full section devoted to science; it’s well worth checking out. All the articles are available on their web site.