One of the most well-known traditions representing the New Year's Eve celebration is the ball drop in New York City's Times Square. A very decorative ball made up of thousands of crystals drops down a pole during the final minute of the year. This year's ball has seen many upgrades from its 2007 version- it's three times brighter, double in size and most notably, has increased in weight from 1,100 pounds to 12,000 pounds.
The ball drop occurs via an electric motor which lowers the ball 70 feet over the course of one minute. The weight increase means that more power will need to be supplied from the motor. We did some research on past ball drops and here's what we know: the gearmotor's output shaft must be 6 rpm and the time must be negligible since timing is crucial for the ball drop event. What we don't know is the minimum horsepower needed by an electric motor.
To see the solution: http://www.info.knovel.com/knovelmessages/NYESolution.html
From the Knovel Blog:
Knovel has just introduced enhancements to our Interactive Tables. These enhancements make it even easier for Knovel users to work with tabular information. Not only are the tables easier to read, but they also support drag and drop functionally, so users can move columns around, hide rows and basically manipulate data.
Here is a link to the official announcement for more info: http://www.info.knovel.com/knovelmessages/Tablesanncmt120108.html
Convincing the faculty and students in the sciences of the value of libraries and librarians can be a particularly "hard sell" as more and more of their primary journal literature becomes available online anywhere from any computer. Six science librarians from the University of Washington experimented with both traditional and unconventional ways to engage our users. We tried meeting them in their spaces, luring them into ours, and using the middle ground of the Internet, with creative initiatives including blogs, give-aways, geocaching, and more.
Carol Tenopir presents an in-depth review of the web portal, Worldwidescience.org, which provides free federated search access to science databases from government agencies worldwide, soon to include China!
"Founded in 2007 through an agreement between the British Library and OSTI, WorldWideScience.org is modeled after Science.gov, a portal to 100 million pages of science bulletins from 13 U.S. government agencies. Both are built using Deep Web Technologies, a Santa Fe, NM–based company that calls its product Explorit Research Accelerator."
WorldWideScience.org includes government-sponsored science content from more than 50 member countries and 40 international portals, as well as everything covered by Science.gov. With the addition of China as a member in August, the portal, Warnick says, “will soon reach a billion pages.”
Read the complete review here: http://tinyurl.com/4zpy5w
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/02/10/question-shop-gives-answer-to-any-telephoned-query/
Friday April 25, 2008: 9:00am - 3:00pm and Saturday April 26, 2008: 10:00am - 2:00pm
As always the Engineering Library will participate in the Open House with a poster display taking the place of the invention poster. We will also be showing a Building Big video continuously.
Please get ready to answer questions about the bathroom locations....
Check out this UW Business Writing Center produced video illustrating the evils of plagiarism.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (1/28, Keefe) reported, "Federal and state energy officials are planning a major investment in new technologies in an attempt to make Hawaii the nation's first state to get the vast majority of its energy from renewable sources." The Energy Department will "solicit proposals from researchers, companies and others to dramatically expand Hawaii's use of solar and wind power." The agency will also seek to take advantage of the state's "unique resources to develop renewable sources of energy," such as "harnessing the power of ocean waves, creating new biofuels based on algae or palm oil, and increasing the use of underground heat generated beneath the island state's volcanoes." Hawaii was chosen by the Energy Department "because of its unique resources, its strategic location for national security, and the state's recent emphasis on developing more renewable energy." The Journal-Constitution noted, "Hawaii today gets about 90 percent of its energy from imported oil. Because of its isolation, its gasoline prices are typically the highest in the nation."
A very creative video gives us pause to think about information and its organizational systems. Take a look!
If you haven't seen this video about copyright and fair use, it's definitely worth it! Plus you get to refresh your knowledge of animated Disney movies!
The database also incorporates INPADOC — “bibliographic data from over 70 countries and legal status data from more than 40 patent authorities” — which, according to Patent Lens, “can help to give an idea whether a patent application related to one of interest was filed in other countries, and possibly whether patents are in force or applications are still pending.”
Check out the review from ResourceShelf: http://www.resourceshelf.com/2007/07/19/resource-of-the-week-patent-searching-for-the-rest-of-us/ and Patent Lens and CAMBIA: http://www.patentlens.net/daisy/patentlens/patentlens.html Patents are available in PDF, full-text, with images. Check it out!!Times change, though. Card catalogs and signatures gave way to bar codes and NET IDs, and the Internet made library searches as convenient as a mouse-click. But through it all, library staffers continued to ink-stamp those due dates inside the books, as ever.
But no longer. This summer, the date stamps are being retired for most all library items except items without bar codes, such as some unbound periodicals and government publications, said Thom Deardorff, UW Libraries coordinator for access services. The change-over started in June and will be complete campuswide by September.
Those who still want one may have a receipt -- which makes an acceptable bookmark -- but very few users are asking for receipts, Deardorff said.
And after all, it makes sense, especially since books can be renewed easily and often online, making the stamped due date incorrect anyway.
Plus, Deardorff said, the staffers had to choose from a variety of stamps depending on the type of item and loan, the elimination of which will make checkouts even faster.
From University Week 7/19/07: http://uwnews.org/uweek/uweekarticle.asp?visitsource=uwkmail&articleID=35314
| By Hannah Hickey News and Information |
Engineering undergraduates begin college with little idea of what it means to be an engineer, and they often don't find out until their third year. Some students justify their heavy workload with a "meritocracy of difficulty" that equates hard work in school with material reward down the road. And findings show that male and female engineering students approach technical questions differently. Read full article
Notes from the recent RIS meeting discuss an update to the policy and acknowledge the variety of realities that exist in the Libraries:
The Signage Committee thinks the signage regarding food and beverages is not very effective in keeping food out of the library. The policy and signage based on the policy don’t reflect the reality that staff members see in the Libraries every day. They suggest either changing the signs or – better - changing the policy.
The group discussed how to proceed. Paul will take this under advisement and get back to the group.
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