Cosmic mystery deepens
In a study appearing in this month’s Astrophysical Journal, an international team of scientists—including an astrophysicist from the University of Victoria—use data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to confirm the presence of a baffling gigantic clump of dark matter at the very heart of Abell 520, a “high-speed cosmic pile-up” involving multiple massive clusters of galaxies 2.4 billion light years from Earth.
“Oil sands article” heats up climate change debate
Climate change and the Alberta oil sands are two related topics that never fail to capture international media attention when new information is published. Combine the two topics into a single article and you get the avalanche of media calls handled by UVic climatologist Andrew Weaver and one of his PhD students, Neil Swart, over the week of Feb. 19.
Siemens to deliver Distinguished Professors Lecture
Do you enjoy paging through hardcovers? Are books dead? What form of reading are readers most comfortable with? Dr. Ray Siemens, a specialist in Early Modern texts and a distinguished professor in UVic's Department of English, is helping turn the page on reading in the modern era. Siemens is UVic's 12th Distinguished Professor, a Canada Research Chair in Humanities Computing, and leads the Electronic Textual Cultures Laboratory (ETCL) at UVic. He is giving a Distinguished Professors Lecture on March 7 at 7 p.m.
Batman, Iron Man and me
The tipping point for me was a Friday afternoon five years ago. I was sitting in my office searching Google Scholar for publication information on one of my recent papers. My most heavily cited paper at the time had about 150 citations. In my scientific domain, anything over 100 was considered a very high-impact paper. But what if that number really means that only 150 people read my paper? Was 150 readers an acceptable impact?
Pursuing social justice in an institutional context
Drawing inspiration from graffiti to strategic plans, from unions to the occupy movement, panellists probed what it takes to pursue social justice in an institutional context Jan. 24 as part of the Provost’s Diversity Research Forum, Critical Conversations: Living Social Justice.
Public Administration home to new UNESCO Chair
The past couple of months have been quite remarkable for Budd Hall, professor of community development in the School of Public Administration. In December, he received an honorary degree from St. Francis Xavier University for his outstanding academic service in the area of international development and adult education. Then Hall received notice of his appointmemnt as a UNESCO Chair.
Grad student goes undercover to infiltrate “Water Army”
A virtual flood is on the rise. There’s a growing “water-army” of online posters at work who earn their name by flooding websites with fake comments and paid endorsements in an orchestrated deluge. And now a UVic graduate student wants to ensure that you don’t take a bath from their cyber confidence tricks.
Island food security means bounty for future
It's well past the 12 days of Christmas and holiday feasting, but as Canadians calculate the cost of December 2011, they may experience firsthand what a recent Statistics Canada report tells us about the annual inflation rate. The price of fresh vegetables is up 13.2 per cent and bread up 11.9 per cent. But it’s not just high prices or earthquakes that could shake or break the fragile links that feed Vancouver Island residents.
Higgs boson—hidden or imagined?
You can’t hear it. You certainly can’t see it. But after telltale signs this winter, the world can be more convinced that the Higgs boson might be all around us. The ATLAS team from UVic played a role in the latest announcement of another round of new data from the Large Hadron Collider.
RCMP to pilot BC bullying prevention program in rural Canada
A new partnership between the RCMP, youth organizations and researchers from the University of Victoria will train RCMP youth officers to assist schools and rural communities in delivering a successful BC anti-bullying program where it’s never been offered before.
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