Computer science enrollment rebounds nationally and at UW

Local perspective on the NYT story that reports that for the first time in six years, enrollment in computer science programs in the United States increased last year. In a blog entry by the Seattle Times' Ben Romano are comments from Ed Lazowska, from the UW CSE department. Full story: http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/techtracks/2009/03/17/computer_science_enrollment_rebounds_nationally_an.html

First woman to earn PhD in Computer Science wins Turing Award

Barbara Liskov, the first woman in the United States to earn a Ph.D. from a computer-science department and a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been awarded the A.M. Turing Award for 2008. http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3652/first-woman-in-us-to-earn-a-phd-from-a-computer-science-department-wins-the-turing-award

30th anniversary of Hood Canal Bridge sinking - emeritus UW prof. remembers...

Posted on Sunday, Feb. 08, 2009

Anniversary of bridge sinking looms large for retired professor

By DEAN KAHN

Feb. 13 this year happens to be Friday the 13th.

It's also the 30th anniversary of the sinking of the Hood Canal floating bridge.

Not many people would have that anniversary fixed in their brain, but Billy Hartz does.

Read More...

IBM Retains Top Spot On Patent List.

IndustryWeek (3/1, Jusko) reports, "For the 16th consecutive year, high-tech giant IBM Corp. has nabbed the top spot for the number of patents granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Not only that, but with 4,186 patents granted in 2008, it also became the first organization to break the 4,000 patent barrier, according to IFI Patent Intelligence, which analyzed USPTO data." However, "the U.S. share of patents is slipping," with "U.S. companies garnering just 49% of U.S. patents granted in 2008, down from 50% in 2007." Further, "U.S. firms hold just four of the top 10 slots and 12 of the top 35." But, according to Darlene Slaughter, general manager of IFI Patent Intelligence, one shouldn't "confuse quantity with quality." Slaughter said, "What's clear is that many of the world's largest companies are placing a higher priority on protecting their intellectual property."

O'Donnell, Auth elected to National Academy of Engineering

Matthew O'Donnell, dean of the University of Washington's College of Engineering and professor in the department of bioengineering, and David Auth, a UW affiliate professor in bioengineering and consultant based in Kirkland, Wash., have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering. http://uwnews.org/uweek/article.aspx?visitsource=uwkmail&id=47239

NASA Celebrates 50 Years

With Automa as your guide through an extensive Flash presentation, learn all about NASA and its' 50 year history. http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/50th/

A Library for Engineering Education: Frank O. Marvin and the University of Kansas, 1875-1915

It was written by Jim Neeley, the fairly recently retired head of the Spahr Engineering Library at KU, and was published late last year in the journal Libraries and the Cultural Record. A very interesting piece. While the focus in on how an engineering library started at KU, many of the forces that led to its creation were more generally present elsewhere, and led to a blossoming of engineering libraries in the late 19th and early 20th century, (a few examples from and ties to other institutions are offered). Jim also makes mention in a number of places of the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education, which was founded in 1893 and later morphed into ASEE. Finally, in the appendix there are a handful of links to pages at other institutions related to the histories of their engineering libraries. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/lac/v043/43.4.neeley.html

WorldCat New Books List?

I have a couple of questions:
1. Have you created a WorldCat account in order to make and/or watch lists?
2. Do you think anyone else has?
The reason I ask is I just logged into my WorldCat account (which I don't do very often) to look for interesting lists to follow. I searched for "engineering" and found that the Kresge Engineering Library at UC Berkeley makes lists of all its new books. You can see their profile and lists here.
So I was wondering if it would be worthwhile to copycat UCB. The idea would be that our patrons could follow the list so they would be able to easily see what our new books are. (Of course, they can already see our new books pretty easily by looking at our new books page, but this would make it even easier.)
Alternatively, I've noticed that some units have RSS feeds of their new books available. I don't think we have that going on, but that would achieve the same effect.
I guess the point is whether students/faculty might find such a thing useful. Part of me thinks yes, because I personally like to keep an eye out for cool new books. But part of me also thinks no, because students/faculty are primarily concerned with their own work/research and will search (or have search updates) for those subjects on their own.
Any thoughts?

Dawg Prints Alerts- new webpage

Due to the recent outages affecting our program, Dawg Prints has taken several steps to better inform and distribute information vital to our users. In addition to the Dawg Prints Support email, the Dawg Prints Updates mailing list, and our Dawg Prints website, we have recently created another site, named Dawg Prints Alerts, to provide centralized notification to our users. This site will be updated whenever an issue affects the Dawg Prints system or a location. You can find it at:http://depts.washington.edu/dawgprnt/dpalerts. If your issue is not addressed please make sure to email Dawg Prints Support at: uwcshelp@u.washington.edu.

A Real Life Chitty Chitty Bang Bang!

The UK's Daily Mail (1/12, Massey) reports on the Terrafugia Transition flying car, set to debut next month. "With wings that fold up automatically at the push of a button, the Terrafugia Transition should be equally at home in the sky or on the road." The Transition "is powered by the same 100 brake horsepower engine...on the ground and in the air" and "Terrafugia claims it will be able to fly up to 500 miles on a single tank of petrol at a cruising speed of 115mph." Currently, according to the article, "the only place in the US in which it is legal to take off from a road is Alaska. And as well as your driving licence, you will need your pilot's licence." Neoseeker (1/11, Ridgely) reported, "Assuming it survives all well and good, it will be in showrooms in 18 months time (July of next year)." The article also noted, "The vehicle is capable of transforming from a two-seater road car to a plane in 15 seconds."

Safari Book collection info- why some books disappear!

You'll probably see some questions about why certain books are not available on Safari when they were available a few weeks ago. If the book in question is a 2006 publication, then it fell off our subscription on Jan. 1st. (our subscription is for the most recent 3 years only, which is now 2007, 2008, and 2009-- even though there's hardly anything available for 2009 yet...). Since O'Reilly books are only available online through Safari, there isn't anyplace else where we can get an electronic copy. The person can request a print copy through the regular book purchase request form or ILL. I've asked cataloging to remove 2006 Safari records from the catalog, so people shouldn't be finding them that way. Let me know if there are any other issues/questions about Safari. Linda.

Knovel Reverse Engineers the New Year's Eve Times Square Ball Drop

Calculating the required horsepower for the electric motor driving Times Square's New Year's Eve ball

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

We Go 2.0 (Sort Of)

As you may have noticed, links to our Facebook page and new blog have been added to the EngLib homepage. Any ideas/suggestions/criticisms about either of these new little ventures will be met with a cold stare. Just kidding! Seriously, I hope these actually get a little use, and it's my belief that the more we all contribute, the more useful our web presence will be. Here a few links about what a Facebook page and blog can do: David Lee King's What can you do with a Facebook page? LibrarianInBlack's Ten Social Networking Tips for Libraries iLibrarian points to the Ultimate Blogger Writing Guide

Knovel Enhanced!

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

Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship

Check out the article "Science Experiments: Reaching Out to Our Users" in the current issue of Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship. Our own Linda Whang and other UW science librarians are the authors! Here's an excerpt from the introduction:

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.

Reference Extract

http://referencextract.org/ Reference Extract is envisioned as a web search engine, like Google, Yahoo and MSN. However, unlike other search engines, Reference Extracts will be built for maximum credibility by relying on the expertise and credibility judgments of librarians from around the globe. Users will enter a search term and get results weighted towards sites most often referred to by librarians at institutions such as the Library of Congress, the University of Washington, the State of Maryland, and over 1,400 libraries worldwide.

Halliburton Applies For Patent-Trolling Patent

I saw this on Slashdot and thought even if it's not true, it's something worth noting: An anonymous reader writes, "Halliburton...has apparently taken an interest in methods of patent trolling. In fact, according to Techdirt, the company has applied for a patent on patent trolling. Specifically, it's applied for a patent on the process of finding a company that protected an invention via trade secret, figuring out what that secret is, patenting it ... and then suing the original company. Hopefully, the patent office rejects this patent, because I somehow doubt that Halliburton is trying to get the patent as a way to block others from patent trolling."

Videos in honor of Open Access Day

Diane Graves, Librarian from Open Access Videos on Vimeo. Open Access Day was October 14. Openaccessday.org posted several videos testifying to the benefits of open access for scholarship: http://vimeo.com/oaday08 These are a project of Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition: sparc.org/ , Public Library of Science: plos.org/ and Students for Free Culture: freeculture.org/

Science Info Without Borders- Worldwidescience.org

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

Engineers develop coating that detects bridge cracks using nanotechnology~

For bridge freaks like me, I think this is pretty cool. I'm not sure about the price though ($1/inch2), although if it prevents structural failure, it's probably worth it at any price: Michigan's Ann Arbor News (original article only available for fee) (9/3, Hamon) reports that Jerry Lynch, a University of Michigan professor of engineering, has led a research team in the development of structural coating that will "detect cracks in bridges before the damage is visible." According to the Ann Arbor News, Lynch and his colleagues created the coating with "carbon nanotubes that use electrical currents to find damage like strain and corrosion." Nicholas Kotov, a UM engineering professor and "key developer of the technology," explained that a "carbon nanotube is microscopic and shaped like a long, hollow strand of spaghetti." Moreover, it is "one of the strongest materials available and, when mixed with the polymers, lends strength to the coating." When electricity flows through the skin, "it produces a two-dimensional image via a central computing device," and "electrical resistance shown in the image will indicate structural damage." Kotov said that the "coating costs about $1 per square inch and is engineered to last decades." He added, "Presumably the carbon nanotube coating won't corrode over the lifetime of the bridge."