C2E2/CDEN: Engineering the Future

Thanks to Sharon Murphy of Queens for reminding me that the final deadline for the call for submissions is May 15th for The Sixth International Conference on Innovation and Practices in Engineering Design and Engineering Education. The conference is July 27 - 29, 2009 at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

From the general call for papers:

The sixth CDEN International Design Engineering Conference will focus on design innovation and engineering education that are such essential ingredients of creating a new future for the people of Canada and the world. Submissions can include, but are not limited to, the philosophy of design; tools and techniques for effective and successful design; methods and tools for designing to meet needs; methods for and research into the assessment of design; teaching and promoting design; humanitarian design; design successes and failures; tear-downs of designs and design-processes; the infrastructure required for design; lessons and methods used in non-engineering design fields; design for commercialization; and related topics.

The goal of the conference is to explore design practice and teaching that leads to better lives for Canadians.

Sharon's coordinating the technical session on "Information Research and Knowledge Management" and would love to see proposals from librarians. You can contact her at murphys at queensu dot ca.

Unfortunately, the conference is during my Summer vacation this year, so I won't be able to attend. It's doubly unlucky because Hamilton is so close to Toronto that attending would have been quite easy.

Recently in the IEEE

Some selections from recently published journal issues.



IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, v31i1, special issue on Asian Language Processing: History and Perspectives

• A Journey from Indian Scripts Processing to Indian Language Processing by Mahesh K. Sinha, R.

IEEE Engineering Management Review, v37i1

• Surf's up: Transforming engineering education by Langford, L.K.

IT Professional, v11i2. Special issue on Cloud Computing

• Cloud Computing: IT as a Service by Lin, Geng; Fu, David; Zhu, Jinzy; Dasmalchi, Glenn
  
  
• The Case for Cloud Computing by Grossman, Robert L
  
  
• Business Models in the Service World by Weinhardt, Christof; Anandasivam, Arun; Blau, Benjamin; Stößer, Jochen
  
  
• A Services University by Zhang, Liang-Jie

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, v28i1

• Predators or plowshares? arms control of robotic weapons by Sparrow, R.
  
  
• The internet and the changing nature of intelligence by Resnyansky, L.

IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, v52i1.

• Tech Talk: An Investigation of Blogging in Technology Innovation Discourse by Davidson, E.; Vaast, E

IEEE Transactions on Education, v52i1.

• Programming Anxiety Amongst Computing Students—A Key in the Retention Debate? by Connolly, C.; Murphy, E.; Moore, S.
  
  
• Predicting Computer Science Ph.D. Completion: A Case Study by Cox, G.W.; Hughes, W.E.; Etzkorn, L.H.; Weisskopf, M.E.

IEEE Security & Privacy, v7i1

• The NRC Takes on Data Mining, Behavioral Surveillance, and Privacy by Landau, S.
  
  
• Cyberpandemics: History, Inevitability, Response by Michael, B.; Voas, J.; Laplante, P

Cool engineering conferences

A couple of conference announcements have crossed my real and virtual desks lately and I think that they are both more than interesting enough to warrant a mention.

First of all, thanks to Sharon Murphy of Queens for bringing The Sixth International Conference on Innovation and Practices in Engineering Design and Engineering Education to my attention at OLA this past week. The conference is July 27 - 29, 2009 at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

From the general call for papers:

The sixth CDEN International Design Engineering Conference will focus on design innovation and engineering education that are such essential ingredients of creating a new future for the people of Canada and the world. Submissions can include, but are not limited to, the philosophy of design; tools and techniques for effective and successful design; methods and tools for designing to meet needs; methods for and research into the assessment of design; teaching and promoting design; humanitarian design; design successes and failures; tear-downs of designs and design-processes; the infrastructure required for design; lessons and methods used in non-engineering design fields; design for commercialization; and related topics.

The goal of the conference is to explore design practice and teaching that leads to better lives for Canadians.

Sharon's coordinating the technical session on "Information Research and Knowledge Management" and would love to see proposals from librarians. You can contact her at murphys at queensu dot ca.


The other cool conference is Engineer of the Future 2.0: Summit on Transforming Engineering Education, on March 31 & April 1, 2009.

Although curriculum reform has been on engineering minds for some time, it is clear that reforms are difficult to sustain and diffuse, and often even when innovations are won, it is difficult to maintain the organizational will to continually improve and adapt. Indeed, the problem of effective educational transformation is as much organizational and political as it is pedagogical and curricular; and it may be the case that effective engineering education transformation requires not a top-down approach, but rather an open-source approach in which diverse voices gather at the grassroots with a variety of views and methodological approaches and openly and actively share best practices.

To explore this possibility, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering and the University of Illinois have joined forces to put on the Summit on the Engineer of the Future 2.0. The event will be held on April 1, 2009 (Wednesday, with opening reception the night before) at Olin College in Needham, MA and will feature a keynote talk by Dean Karan Watson, Texas A&M, a panel discussion of successful engineers of the future (recent grads 5-10 years out with a track record of entrepreneurial, corporate, organizational, or societal success), and brainstorming and involvement sessions in the afternoon. The event will be followed on Thursday with the opportunity to visit Olin College.

Submissions here.

Both conferences look fabulous and unfortunately I won't be at either. It's doubly disappointing because Hamilton is in my back yard but the time is right in the middle of my summer vacation this year.

IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine

A relatively new magazine from the IEEE, one that I just heard about the other day in the most recent What's New @ IEEE in Libraries. It looks very interesting and has the potential to be a great showcase for issues surrounding women in engineering and science in general.

There have been three issues so far: v1i1, v2i1 and v2i2.

From the Letter from the Editor, Karen Panetta, in the first issue.

The goal of this magazine is to be your resource for helping to attract, retain, and sustain women in the engineering and science fields. For parents and educators, IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine will showcase the exciting career opportunities in the IEEE fields of interest and provide you with access to successful outreach activities that will help encourage children to pursue engineering. The magazine will also provide networking and career support whether you are a student, young or seasoned professional, or reentering the workforce.

*snip*

Oftentimes, I am met with questions about the need for the existence of groups such as WIE. Less than 30% of all engineers are women, with the majority of this number falling in the chemical and biomedical engineering fields. Electrical engineering and
computer engineering still continue to be the most underrepresented engineering fields for women. The attrition of women in the electrical engineering profession also shows that women are leaving the discipline at extremely high rates. Women are a valuable untapped resource that makes up 50% of the world’s workforce. This, coupled with the fact that there are so few women pursuing engineering, is evidence that a problem exists and demands action. Furthermore, we often forget that places in the world still exist where women are not allowed to pursue education, never mind the possibility of pursuing an engineering career. There are countries that have IEEE chapters, yet women are still not permitted to present their work due to cultural issues. IEEE WIE is committed to overcoming the barriers that have kept women from pursuing and advancing in their careers.

I couldn't have said it better myself!

Some highlights from the first three issues:

• Women engineers fight numbers lag by Ionescu, C.
  
  
• Building a strong: foundation for the future: Monkeys, machines, and museums all playing a part in education
  
  
• Looking at the Big Picture: Joan “JPEG” Mitchell Battles the Gender Divide by Keller, J.C.
  
  
• For the love of engineering by Salim, N.
  
  
• Bringing real-world relevance into engineering classrooms by Peress, R.
  
  
• Blending technology and the law for cyber security [Women to Watch] by Wax, H.
  
  
• Guarding ethics in engineering [The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly] by Wax, H.
  
  
• Becoming leaders [Career Advisor] by Prives, L.

More on York's role in the Mars Phoenix Mission

Some more good media coverage of the York angle on the Mars Phoenix Mission:

BTW, check out the Martian weather here.

The weather on Mars is clear and very cold

The Canadian team is receiving daily weather reports from Phoenix’s Canadian-built meteorological station for the duration of the 90-day mission. Phoenix, a joint project of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories and the University of Arizona, landed on Mars on May 25, at 7:38pm EDT. The weather station was activated within the first hour after landing.

"Measurements are now being recorded continuously, and will expand to include humidity and visibility," says Jim Whiteway, professor of space engineering at York and the principal investigator for the Canadian team.

York profs watch from Arizona as Mars probe lands safely (Includes mentions of other media reports)

York alumnus Steve MacLean (BSc '77, PhD '83), chief astronaut for the Canadian Space Agency, said Canada got involved in the project because of its expertise operating in a frigid northern environment, wrote The Canadian Press May 25. “This is the first time that we have an instrument that we sponsored as a nation” on such a space mission, he said. “All the measurements that we did in the North over the last 15 years contribute to us being a major player on this mission.”

The weather station Canada built for the mission is able to provide regular readings of the temperature on Mars, atmospheric pressure, cloud height, humidity and wind speed.

The lidar system comes from Alan Carswell, York professor emeritus, who ran a laboratory and then spun off a company called Optech to develop a larger role for Canada in the space program. MacLean says Carswell has emerged as a central figure in the Mars mission and is at the Phoenix mission control centre overseeing the operation.

Canadians feel loss of Mars mission scientist

Clinking glasses as they celebrated the triumphant touchdown on Mars of the Phoenix lander Sunday evening, York University professor Jim Whiteway and his team missed the one person who should have been there.

Diane Michelangeli was the lead researcher behind the innovative Canadian-built meteorological station on the Phoenix, before she died of cancer last year – less than a month after the station was launched. Team members still feel the loss.

"We were thinking of Diane after the landing," said Whiteway yesterday from the University of Arizona, where scientists had gathered to watch the lander touchdown with "surreal" accuracy. "We're missing Diane dearly."

York Goes to Mars!

It was very exciting last night catching the landing of the Mars Phoenix Mission on TV -- unfortunately I only caught the last half of the show.

Of course, the mission's meteorological station is a significant Canadian contribution -- and a huge part of that is York scientists from the Earth & Space Science & Engineering department.

Great coverage in the Globe and Mail today as well as all over the Internet.

Some nice coverage today in York's online newsletter, Y-File:

Scientists from York University led the design and construction of the meteorological equipment, in collaboration with the University of Alberta, Dalhousie University, the University of Aarhus in Denmark, the Finnish Meteorological Institute, and the Canadian firms of MDA Space Missions and Optech Inc., with $37 million in funding from the Canadian Space Agency.

The meteorological station consists of temperature, wind and pressure sensors, as well as a laser based-light-detecting-and-ranging (lidar) system. The lidar will shoot pulses of laser light into the Martian sky, precisely measuring components of the atmosphere, such as dust, ground fog and clouds, from the surface up to a range of 20 km.

York researchers will receive a daily Martian weather report for the duration of the mission – approximately 92 days, or 90 Martian sols.

"We’re very excited to be deploying Canadian technology on Mars for the first time," says Jim Whiteway, professor of space engineering at York and the principal investigator for the Canadian team. “Our instrumentation will observe clouds and dust and this will provide new insight into the climate of Mars and the planet’s potential for supporting life.”

The also very nicely profile the York members of the team:

Jim Whiteway, professor of space engineering and Canada Research Chair in Space & Engineering & Atmospheric Science. Whiteway is a noted expert in the use of lidar technology to study cloud processes. He is the team’s principal investigator and led the design, testing and implementation of the lidar system.

Allan Carswell, professor emeritus, Department of Physics & Astronomy, Faculty of Science & Engineering. Carswell is one of Canada’s pre-eminent space scientists and an internationally-recognized leader in the field of lidar systems. In 1974, he founded Optech Inc., to develop commercial systems based on lidar technology. The lidar technology pioneered by Carswell will measure dust, clouds and fog in the Martian atmosphere.

Peter Taylor, professor of atmospheric science and applied mathematics, Department of Earth & Space Science & Engineering, Faculty of Science & Engineering. Taylor studies wind and blowing snow in the Canadian Arctic, making him an ideal scientist for research into the Martian sub-polar climate. He and his team completed wind-tunnel testing of the temperature sensors that will be used on the Mars lander, and they will conduct research into issues related to dust concentrations in the lower atmosphere of Mars and sublimation of exposed ice surfaces.

Cameron Dickinson, research associate, Department of Earth & Space Science & Engineering, Faculty of Science & Engineering, is studying the scattering of laser light with airborne Martian dust. Dickinson will be heavily involved in the operations of the meteorological instruments, including creation of the daily commands that will be uploaded to the lander, and managing the data that is sent back to Earth twice each day. He will also assist the science team at large, organizing and scheduling the experiments for all six instruments each day.

In memoriam – Diane Michelangeli (1962 to 2007)

Diane Michelangeli was a planetary scientist at York University and principal investigator for the Phoenix mission. As a specialist in microscopic measurements of clouds and their particles, she developed some of the most advanced computer models of the clouds and dust on Mars. Her work – so vital to understanding the atmospheric processes taking place near the landing site – made her a natural choice to lead the Canadian science contribution to the Phoenix mission. She died of cancer on August 30, 2007.

(Yes, there is science in Toronto north of Bloor ;-)

IEEE Trans on Education: Special issue on plagiarism

The latest issue of the IEEE Transactions on Education (v51i2) has a special section on plagiarism. A bunch of the articles look very interesting, both to scitech faculty and to librarians looking to collaborate with those faculty. I haven't read the articles in detail yet, so I'm not sure if librar* are mentioned in any of them.

Here's the relevant parts of the TOC:

• Guest Editorial: Plagiarism by Kaynak, O.; Braun, R.; Kennedy, I.
  
  
• The Plagiarism Decision Process: The Role of Pressure and Rationalization by McCuen, R. H.
  
  
• On Students' Strategy-Preferences for Managing Difficult Course Work by Jian, H.-L.; Sandnes, F. E.; Huang, Y.-P.; Cai, L.; Law, K. M. Y.
  
  
• A Technological Tool to Detect Plagiarized Projects in Microsoft Access by McCart, J. A.; Jarman, J.
  
  
• Detection of Plagiarism in Programming Assignments by Rosales, F.; Garcia, A.; Rodriguez, S.; Pedraza, J. L.; Mendez, R.; Nieto, M. M.
  
  
• A Cautionary Note on Checking Software Engineering Papers for Plagiarism by Kaner, C.; Fiedler, R. L.
  
  
• A Longitudinal Study of Nonoriginal Content in Final-Year Computing Undergraduate Projects by Culwin, F.
  
  
• Towards a Definition of Source-Code Plagiarism by Cosma, G.; Joy, M.
  
  
• Avoiding Plagiarism in Contexts of Development and Change by Beute, N.; van Aswegen, E. S.; Winberg, C.
  
  
• Faculty and Student Classroom Influences on Academic Dishonesty by Broeckelman-Post, M. A.
  
  
• A Consideration of the Use of Plagiarism Tools for Automated Student Assessment by Graven, O. H.; MacKinnon, L. M.

Space and beyond: Science Rendezvous at York

Post updated: Science Rendezvous is tomorrow!

Once again, if you're in Toronto on Saturday May 10th, there's a whole bunch of science-y events at various institutions, including York. The York events will be concentrating on Space Science & Engineering. The event is called Science Rendezvous. The York events are at the Keele campus Lots of info in today's Y-File article.

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.

More-or-less cross posted from the CSE blog.

National Engineering Week!

It's National Engineering Week next week, with the Ontario page here.

As usual, there's a nice supplement in the Globe and Mail, although the 2008 edition isn't up yet. As usual, lots of good articles including ones on Environmental challenges, Alternative Energy, Engineering in the Life Sciences, Auto Innovation, Robot Games, a couple of Engineering Careers and Engineering in Space.

Now that York's Engineering Program has been accredited, we actually figure quite prominently in the supplement. There's a nice ad and Prof. Spiros Pagiatakis gets quoted in the article on Environmental Challenges.

Not only that, but there's a a good chunk of an article devoted to Space Engineering projects at York. Projects by Profs. James Whiteway and Ben Quine are featured -- and a rather fuzzy picture of Ben with his thermal vacuum chamber.

Jonathan Dahl on scholarly societies

Jonathan Dahl, IEEE Staff Director, Sales & Marketing, is interviewed in the most recent Against the Grain. It's a substantial, wide-ranging interview, touching on a lot of topics from the history of the IEEE, it's "rivalry" with the ACM and how to keep up with trends in technology.

But, most interestingly for us, AtG asks this question:

Why should we, your customers, care about whether a society or a commercial publisher publishes a journal?

Ah, my favorite topic! If you look at all the standard quality indices, like the Journal Citation Report, journals published by societies usually rank significantly higher than journals published by commercial publishers, at least in our space. I don’t hear that being remarked on as much as it should be. What we are also
finding out is that some of the less-standard indicators, like the generation of important new patents, strongly show the dominant influence of society journals.

Let me give you an example, and we’re very proud of this: Last year, in 2006, there were over 250,000 patents approved in the U.S. for the top 25 patent companies — companies like IBM, Hitachi, Samsung, HP, Sony, Intel, etc... That’s not just their patents in technology, its all patents — chemistry patents, nano patents,
mousetrap patents, all patents. Of these 250,000 patents, 38% of them were based on an IEEE journal article. That’s a phenomenal result! In second place, with 9% of patents, was Elsevier Science. Virtually all the other patents by these top 25 patent companies were based on papers published by scientific societies — the American Institute of Physics, the American Chemical Society, the American Vacuum Society, and so on.

So you can make a strong case that the intellectual property published by the scientific societies is driving R&D discovery and, ultimately, the economy itself. Moreover, if you look at the big commercial STM publishers, many of the journals they publish are on behalf of scientific societies that are too small to publish themselves.

So that’s why you should care if you’re subscribing to a society journal or a commercial journal. University libraries can and should be discriminating customers. And I won’t even begin to talk about price!

Thats a great answer. The importance of scholarly societies is undiminished in the scholarly communications landscape for the scitech fields, and as much as we drive for change and more open access in these fields, we still need to keep in our minds that we have to support these societies as they struggle to find workable business models for the future. Unlike commercial publishers, who's first priority must be profit, societies' first priorities must be the advancement of scholarship and giving good services to their members.

Of course, when societies stray from those ideals and act more like commercial publishers, we in the broader scientific community must call them on the betrayal of that trust.

And the IEEE is certainly one of the good guys as far as that goes. I met Jonathan at the IEEE Library Advisory Council meeting last fall and was impressed by his commitment to the engineering community and to the promotion of access to scholarship.

Come to think of it, it would have been great if AtG had asked him what he thought the publishing business model for scholarly societies was going to be in 10 or 15 years. Hmmm.

via What's New at IEEE, Libraries.

The power of networking stems the flow of women leaving computer sciences

Really nice article in this week's ylife, York's student email newsletter: The power of networking stems the flow of women leaving computer sciences.

It's about the WiCSE program for Women in Computer Science & Engineering.

For Professor Melanie Baljko, WiCSE provides an essential support service to female students in computer science and engineering. Baljko, who has an interest in the challenges women face in computer science and engineering, has investigated a phenomenon referred to as the leaky pipe syndrome. "I have a longstanding interest in how to encourage women to start careers in computer science and engineering. I have been part of several initiatives at other universities and here at York to find out why the attrition rate is higher among women in computer science and engineering," said Baljko.

"I am particularly interested in why women come into computer science and engineering in smaller numbers and why the drop-out rate is higher," said Baljko. "There are also fewer women in higher management positions in the industry and even fewer in academia. Sociologists have studied this phenomenon called the 'leaky pipe syndrome'."

Baljko said that research has shown that practical solutions are essential in retaining young women in the profession, and groups such as WiCSE offer an important lifeline for female students who are often coping with multiple demands for their time and who have few role models to emulate. "In our group we have seen that practical solutions work and what is most effective is the social networking that groups such as WiCSE offer to young women entering the profession."

A large number of young women enrolled in computer science and engineering programs in Canada and the United States either do not finish their studies or end up leaving the profession, slipping away in silence, explained Baljko.

"There is a disproportionate loss due to women switching to other fields of study," said Baljko. "We [faculty] in computer science and engineering are striving to provide greater social context for the material in the computer science curriculum, so, even early on in undergraduate studies, we can show our field's usefulness to society."

It's a great article, well worth reading the whole thing. Bravo!

Here & There

A few items that might have deserved full posts had I not become strangely obsessed with lists of science books:

• Chemical blogspace is a chemistry blog aggregation service using the Postgenomic software. It aggregates a total of 125 blogs.
  
  
• A series of CBC Radio shows called How to Think about Science consisting of interviews with scientists such as Simon Schaffer, Lorraine Daston and Margaret Lock. via A Blog around the Clock
  
  
• The site for The Scientist Lab Website and Video Awards has a list of links to a bunch of great lab websites. A lot of super cool stuff for us Science 2.0 types to gaze at in wonder. I wish more of them would have blogs so we could get an idea of what's happening at the labs on a daily or weekly basis.
  
  
• And speaking of labs with blogs, via The World's Fair, The Redfield Lab at UBC is a place where everyone is required to have a blog, from The Boss Rosemany Redfield to all the postdocs, students and even the work study student.
  
  
• Janet Stemwedel of Adventures in Ethics and Science polls her freshman Engineering Ethics about cheating...with discussion here and here.
  
  
• A huge post at Coding Horror on The Big Ball of Mud and Other Architectural Disasters that relates building code to building buildings, from shacks to urban sprawl to total demolition. A great post building on this classic paper. I love Coding Horror -- it's easily one of my favourite CS blogs.

On the move -- ASEE St. Lawrence Conference and IEEE Library Advisory Council

• I'll be at the ASEE St. Lawrence Section Annual Conference tomorrow and Saturday. As is my practice, I plan to blog the conference once it's done, probably next week or the week after. If you're there too, please feel free to stop me and say Hi.
  
  
• The reason I may not get to blogging the ASEE conference for a week or so is that next week (Oct 24-26) I'll be in NYC for the IEEE Library Advisory Council annual meeting. If you have any feedback you'd like me to pass along, feel free to email me. Don't worry, I plan to bring up the PRISM thing and hopefully clarify the IEEE's involvement, which I believe is minimal.
  
  Any of you NYC readers out there, I may have some time Wednesday afternoon for a coffee or a beer. Let me know at jdupuis at yorku dot ca and maybe we can meet up at The Strand or something. (Hey, with the exchange rate where it is I'm major league stocking up on books!) I'm not sure how much I'll blog about the meeting, but I will be posting the presentation I'll be doing with Mike Buschman of the IEEE.

Latest in ACM & IEEE

• Communications of the ACM, v50i10
  
  • Technology strategy and management: Extreme programming compared with Microsoft-style iterative development by Michael A. Cusumano
    
  • [Software patents] The good, the bad, and the messy by Matt E. Thatcher, David E. Pingry
    
  • Inspiring students to pursue computing degrees by Asli Yagmur Akbulut, Clayton Arlen Looney
  
  
  
• IEEE Internet Computing, v11i5 (special section on Semantic-Web-Based Knowledge Management)
  
  • Collective Wisdom: A Modest Proposal to Improve Peer Review, Part 1 by Douglis, Fred
    
  • Extracting Relevant Attribute Values for Improved Search by Bergamaschi, Sonia; Sartori, Claudio; Guerra, Francesco; Orsini, Mirko
    
  • Harvesting Wiki Consensus: Using Wikipedia Entries as Vocabulary for Knowledge Management by Hepp, Martin; Siorpaes, Katharina; Bachlechner, Daniel
  
  
  
• ACM Transactions on Internet Technology, v7i3, (special issue on the Internet and Outsourcing)
  
  • 24-hour knowledge factory: Using Internet technology to leverage spatial and temporal separations by Amar Gupta, Satwik Seshasai
    
  • The Internet's role in offshored services: A case study of India by Rafiq Dossani, Nathan Denny
  
  
  
• IEEE Technology and Society Magazine v26i3 (special issue on Disaster Preparedness and Recovery)
  
• Devising Post-Disaster Continuity Plans that Meet Actual Recovery Needs by Cousins, T.J.
  
• We've Got to Talk: Emergency Communications and Engineering Ethics by Stephan, K.D.
  

Check out my new blog for York Computer Science & Engineering students

This post is aimed a little more at the Engineering & CS profs and students out there; I'm interested in what you might think about this project.

I've created yet another blog, this one I'm aiming at Engineering & Computer Science students at my institution. I have two main ideas for this blog: first, as a place to locate my IL related links and other information. In the past I've used static web pages and was pretty happy with them. However, over time (and mostly over my sabbatical) I thought that I might want something a little easier, a little more flexible, a little more interactive and mashupable. And I saw an example of what could be accomplished at Heather Matheson's OLA presentation.

It took me a while, but I think I've got something I can live with. It uses WordPress instead of Joomla; but it also incorporates some rss feeds like my linkblog and the new book lists from my library. It has Meebo so students can touch base with me directly. Mostly I like that I've been able to move over the old IL instructional pages I did in FrontPage with relatively little fuss and bother. The classes I've used it for so far seem to like it and the reception from faculty too has been positive. It just looks cooler.

Second, as a place where I can highlight York science profs in the news and post some interesting links to engineering/CS stuff I think is neat, useful or interesting. I plan on using the WordPress pages feature to add digested versions of the full blown pathfinders we have. As well I want to create a list of all the different IL pages so anyone can find them without scrolling or searching.

I've also used the blog for some non-Engineering/CS classes, explaining that the current blog is just a prototype for future blogs in other areas. For example, I do a lot of Science & Technology Studies and Natural Science (NatSci are breadth courses for non-science students) courses and the posts don't really belong on the CSE blog. I would like to eventually create one for Nats/STS but I don't want to commit to it until I have a better idea of how successful the idea is. If you were a non-CSE student, would you be ok with your courses web page being hosted on a CSE blog?

I'm also particularly interested in what other librarians out there have done with IL or subject-focused blogs, how you've done things differently or the same. If you've preferred WordPress or Blogger or if you think that a more sophisticated CMS like Moodle or Joomla is the way to go. As usual, either drop a comment here, Meebo or email at jdupuis at yorku dot ca. Feedback, suggestions, ideas, pros, cons are all more than welcome; the blog is plainly a work in progress and I full expect it to evolve some more in the coming months.

Recently in the IEEE

Yesterday was the first day back at work in the library. The sabbatical is now over.

So, what am I reading this week? Some cool stuff from IT Professional, IEEE Annals in the History of Computing and IEEE Transaction on Education.

• Are Computing Students Different? An Analysis of Coping Strategies and Emotional Intelligence by Belanger, F.; Lewis, T.; Kasper, G. M.; Smith, W. J.; Harrington, K. V.
  
• Best Practices Involving Teamwork in the Classroom: Results From a Survey of 6435 Engineering Student Respondents by Oakley, B. A.; Hanna, D. M.; Kuzmyn, Z.; Felder, R. M.
  
• Alan Kay: Transforming the Computer into a Communication Medium by Barnes, Susan B.
  
• Computer Science Curriculum Developments in the 1960s by Gupta, Gopal K.
  
• Open Source Software: Is It Worth Converting? by Laplante, Phillip; Gold, Anthony; Costello, Thomas
  
• Understanding Web 2.0 by Murugesan, San

What's New @ IEEE

The May 2007 editions kicks off a snazzy new renovated version of the What's New newsletters. A couple of interesting items from the latest ones.

From the Libraries edition:

New Members Join IEEE Library Advisory Council

Four new representatives have joined the IEEE Library Advisory Council. They include: Jose Octavio Alonso Gamboa, Biblioteca Universitaria; David Alsmeyer, British Telecom Library; John Dupuis, York University; and Gerald Steeman, NASA Langley. The IEEE Library Advisory Council brings together international corporate, academic, and government librarians who consult with IEEE to help develop products and policies. For more information, visit here


E-Books Face Failure as Popular Alternative to Print Texts

Electronic books are fated to fail, according to an article from ComputerWorld that examines the feasibility of technology companies putting major e-books on the market in the hopes of attracting the public away from buying print books. A number of disadvantages are cited for e-books, including the high cost of hardware, the lack of discounts for books in electronic form, and the tactile sensations that real books produce in readers. Read more

As you can see from the first item, I've joined the IEEE Library Advisory Council starting this year. I'm greatly looking forward to working with my IEEE colleagues and fellow librarians from literally around the world to help make the CS community a little easier to navigate. We had our first virtual meeting last week and I'm looking forward to our next face-to-face meeting in the fall.

From the Students edition:

Computer Conference Targets Opportunities for Women

Carnegie Mellon University will host a first-of-its-kind conference focusing on computer science research opportunities for undergraduate women in October, featuring a keynote address by IBM researcher Frances Allen, the first woman to receive the nation's top computer science honor, the A.M. Turing Award. Declines in U.S. enrollments in computer science programs, particularly among women, underline the necessity of the conference, organizers say, since computer science is increasingly critical to driving discoveries in a wide variety of fields. At the conference, "OurCS" (Opportunities for Undergraduate Research in Computer Science) participants will learn about research by working in teams guided by scientists from academia and industry, and will have opportunities to present talks on their own research. According to the university, the conference will also feature female graduate students in computer science who will discuss their experiences in graduate school. Read more


Lifelong Learning Critical to Every Engineer's Career

Lifelong learning is critical to every engineer's career, IEEE-USA President John Meredith says in a Point of View column for Electronic Design magazine. "Whether you're a recent college graduate, in the middle of your career, or even counting the months until retirement, you must pursue an aggressive plan to stay on top of current technologies." He recommends that young engineers seek challenging assignments because of their learning potential. Read the column


Online Gaming: Where Dictatorships are a Good Thing

Wealth and property acquired in online games are only stable when players convert them to real-world assets, according to science fiction writer and technologist Cory Doctorow. Games like World of Warcraft and Second Life are absolute dictatorships, but trying to introduce democracy might spoil the fun, says Doctrow. Ownership of assets created or earned in the virtual world are wholly contingent upon the whims of the companies controlling the games, Doctorow says, but an online democracy, the rules of which would stabilize virtual wealth, would only be fun for the rulemakers. Much of the fun in virtual world derives from artificial scarcity, according to Doctorow when he says that the economics of online games are “basically the same economics of the music industry, but applied to every field of human endeavor in the entire (virtual) world.” Read more

Working Group on Computational Science and Engineering Undergraduate Education

As we all know, science is becoming more computational every day. Computers are being used to simulate and solve an increasing number of scientific problems. SIAM’s Working Group on Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) Undergraduate Education has released a very interesting report on how schools can improve computational science training for the next generation of mathematicians, scientists and engineers.

It's a fascinating report on topics ranging from why have a CSE program to how to design such a program to some case studies to the value of internships to career possibilities. All that's missing is an extensive CSE bibliography!

One interesting thing that they note in the introduction is that CSE programs tend to be more diverse than other math or computing programs:

It is widely documented that the number and proportion of female undergraduates in computing fields has been declining in recent years. CSE, and especially CSE applied to the biological sciences, typically attract a much higher proportion of females. It is not uncommon for undergraduate applied mathematics programs to have a majority of female students, and it is very common for biology, for example. CSE therefore represents a good opportunity to attract a more diverse student body into computing.

Via Math News You Can Use!

Facebook is public not private

An interesting story in the most recent What's New @ IEEE for Students"

5. SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES MAY BE HURTFUL TO YOUR CAREER

While the number of social networking sites has exploded over the past few years, so too have the number of potential dangers associated with them for engineers looking for work, according to an article from IEEE USA Today’s Engineer. Employers often check these sites before hiring potential employers and can be shocked by the images and writing of their prospective hires and the inappropriate behavior this portrays. Many employers base their hiring decisions on the background information they gather on the employee. The article also explains techniques employers can use to locate information on sites that is considered private. Two online social networks focused on career training, information, and jobs are highlighted to emphasize that some social networks can be more helpful than others.

To read more, go to: www.todaysengineer.org/2007/Jan-Feb/networking.asp

And a quote from the original story in IEEE USA Today's Engineer:

Your Career Builders profile may be the professional face you wear online, but sites like MySpace or Facebook may be perceived as the “real” you. Many college students and entry-level employees may think that these social networking sites are not part of the adult world and forget that they are being viewed as an adult by their employer. To put a different face on the “real,” the first thing you may want to do is Google yourself. What comes up first? Is it true? Is it questionable? Can it be changed or removed? Is your name on a group photo you took with friends or co-workers on that wild night last year in Las Vegas? If so, what happened in Las Vegas may not stay in Las Vegas. It may end up on the computer screen of your present or prospective employer. Is there a “block comments” feature on your social networking site that you can use? You may want to ensure that the information on your site is suitable for most adult readers — including your grandmother!

The lesson in all this? Don't post anything on a social site that you wouldn't want your mother, father, grandmother, teacher, boss, potential boss, boy/girlfriend, whatever, to see. Sadly, we should probably consider social networking sites as an extension of our public personnas rather than as parts of our private lives. If you want to be naughty online, be anonymous. Read the whole article, it has a lot of insights on how potential employers use the web to check out applicants.

As an aside, when I'm on a search committee I always Google at least the short listed candidates and often many of the other applicants as well. I've never found anything shocking. On the other hand, I'm always surprised when I can't find anything about a candidate. How can you be an active professional (or even an aspiring one) in this day and age and leave no impression on the web?

Friday Fun: Build your own Sherman tank edition

Ok, I've posted a lot of strange stuff over the years, but this one has to be one of the coolest and strangest yet. There's this guy that's built himself a working 1:2.5 scale model Sherman M4A1 tank, complete with engine, turret, tracks, paint ball gun, the works. And he's produced a series of short videos (on YouTube, natch) with a quick-and-dirty description of how he's done it. He plans to produce a more detailed version so people can replicate his feat.

I've watched a fair bit of it and it's fascinating. The sound isn't that terrific, but I'm pretty sure his name is David Madson.

Take a look, it's cool stuff, in a very sick, twisted, militaristic sort of way, of course.

(Via BoingBoing.)