Rowing across the Atlantic—with UVic’s help
Later this month, when four men push off from Africa’s westernmost point to row across the Atlantic, they’ll give both the mundane routine and the complexity of their daily schedules over to a computer program developed at UVic. The Ocean Adventure Rowing (OAR) Northwest team, including Olympic gold medalist and UVic and Vikes alumnus Adam Kreek, will share a modified 29-foot rowboat for the Africa to the Americas 2012 trip, embarking from Dakar, Senegal for Miami, Florida—a 6,700-kilometre trip across the Atlantic expected to take 60–100 days.
Ring around Andromeda challenges galactic ideas
A surprising discovery about dwarf galaxies orbiting the much larger Andromeda galaxy suggests that conventional ideas regarding the formation of galaxies like our own Milky Way are missing something fundamental. In a paper published Jan. 3 in the prestigious journal Nature, an international team of astronomers including two University of Victoria professors describes the discovery that almost half of the 30 dwarf galaxies orbiting Andromeda do so in an enormous plane more than a million light years in diameter, but only 30,000 light years thick.
NEPTUNE Canada celebrates with a new book
Three years ago, the University of Victoria made scientific history by streaming live data from NEPTUNE Canada, the world’s largest and most advanced undersea observatory network. Now, a new book highlights the ocean network’s first year of research and operations. An Invitation to Science is an overview of deep-sea technology and research projects at each of the five node sites along the 812-km cabled undersea network.
Starring…UVic’s world-leading microscope
Small has been really big at UVic ever since the Scanning Transmission Electron Holography Microscope (STEHM)—the most advanced microscope in the world—began its installation in the basement of the Bob Wright Centre in May 2012. But small has been huge for Dr. Rodney Herring, associate professor in mechanical engineering, since he began his career as a research facilitator with the Canada Space Agency years ago.
Brain to brawn: Training one leg strengthens both after stroke
To recover strength and ultimately perhaps the ability to walk, the best bet after a severe stroke might just be to forego working the weaker, more-affected side. It seems counter-intuitive, but high-intensity strength training on the less-affected side could have remarkable potential for helping recover mobility after a stroke, new UVic research indicates.
High-energy physics gets big jolt from supercomputing
An international team led by UVic, the California Institute of Technology and the University of Michigan sent another mega jolt of data down the supercomputing highway in November. The researchers broke a high-energy physics record at the world’s premier supercomputing conference, the SC2012 in Salt Lake City, by transferring the equivalent of one million full-length movies per day.
Unique carnivorous sponge discovered
When you’ve discovered dozens of new species, it takes something more than a little unusual to spark excitement. For Henry Reiswig, UVic adjunct professor of biology, the images of a candelabra-shaped “something” was enough to snare his curiosity and turned out to be a previously unknown species of carnivorous sponge.
Students aim to send satellite into space
University of Victoria students are aiming to take their engineering expertise to new heights.
The university’s extracurricular ECOSat team was one of three finalists out of 12 university teams competing in the Canadian Satellite Design Challenge, which wrapped up Sept. 29 in Ottawa with the announcement of a second offering of the competition with similar parameters.
Ottawa, BC invest $41.7 million in ONC
On Oct. 3, the federal and BC governments announced a total of $41.7 million in new funding to support the ongoing operating costs of the ONC Observatory, which is managed for UVic by Ocean Networks Canada (ONC). The funding is awarded through the Canada Foundation for Innovation’s (CFI) Major Science Initiatives program, which supports a portion of the operating costs of selected big science projects across Canada.
Permafrost thaw will speed up global warming, predicts study
The thawing of permafrost in Canada’s Arctic and other northern latitudes will significantly accelerate the rate of global warming in the coming decades, predicts a new study by three researchers from the University of Victoria’s School of Earth and Ocean Sciences.
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