Author David Montgomery has discovered that the three-foot-deep skin of our planet is slowly being eroded away, with potentially devastating results. In this engaging lecture, Montgomery draws from his book ‘Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations’ to trace the role of soil use and abuse in the history of societies, and discuss how the rise of organic and no-till farming bring hope for a new agricultural revolution. Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.
Relevant Books and Articles at UBC Library
Montgomery, D. (2014). Blue water ditching. Business & Commercial Aviation, 110(10), 40. [Link]
Montgomery, D. (1972). Air-born new Texas metropolis. City : Review of Urban America, 6(4), 27-231.
Trevor Pinch is Professor of Science and Technology Studies and Professor of Sociology at Cornell University. Pinch has a degree in Physics from the Imperial College London and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Bath. He taught sociology at the University of York before moving to the USA. Together with Wiebe Bijker, he started the movement known as Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) within the sociology of science. He is the coeditor of How Users Matter: The Co-Construction of Users and Technology (MIT Press, 2003) and the coauthor of Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer and other books. He is a significant contributor to the study of Sound culture, and his books include a major study of Robert Moog. This talk addresses the topic of digital music through a two year ethnographic study of the users of the website ACIDplanet.com. ACIDplanet.com is a website where musicians can upload and download their own musical creations. Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. For a full transcript of this program, please find here.
Select Articles Available at UBC Library
Pinch, T. (2010). On making infrastructure visible: Putting the non-humans to rights. Cambridge Journal of Economics,34(1), 77-89. [Link]
Pinch, T. (2010). The invisible technologies of Goffman’s sociology from the merry-go-round to the Internet. Technology and culture, 51(2), 409-424. [Link]
Pinch, T., & Swedberg, R. (2013). Wittgenstein’s visit to Ithaca in 1949: on the importance of details. Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory, 14(1), 2-29. [Link]
Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the Physics and Astronomy Department. The Steady-State vs Big-Bang controversy of the 1960s, also known as the source-count controversy, was almost unparalleled in bitterness and rancour. The very personal struggle between Ryle and Hoyle changed the course of the lives of both men. It resulted essentially in the loss from the record of a major cosmological discovery which astronomers and cosmologists finally recognized and revisited far too late. Wall was directly involved in the fight and its resolution, and came to know both Ryle and Hoyle as friends. From this perspective he describes what happened, together with the flow of consequences into current astrophysics and cosmology. Dr. Jasper Wall is professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at UBC.
This webcast is sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by St. John’s College. Andrew Goudie was Professor of Geography and a Fellow of Hertford College from 1984 to 2003. A distinguished physical geographer, he was awarded the DSc by the University in 2002, a Royal Medal from the Royal Geographical Society in 1991, the Prize of the Royal Belgian Academy for 2002. From September 2005 – 2009 he was President of the International Association of Geomorphologists. He has recently been President of the Geographical Association, President of Section E of the British Association, and Chairman of the British Geomorphological Research Group. He is a former Delegate of the Oxford University Press and a former Pro-Vice Chancellor. Professor Goudie became Master of St. Cross College, Oxford, in October 2003, but continues to lecture at the School of Geography and the Environment. He was awarded the Geological Society of America’s Farouk El-Baz Prize for desert research in 2007, and the David Linton Award of the British Society for Geomorphology in 2009. Goudie’s main research interests include desert geomorphology, dust storms, weathering, climatic change in the tropics, and the impacts of humans on the environment. He is also undertaking work on the landforms of Dorset and the Cotswolds. He is continuing his experimental weathering work using an environmental cabinet and a Grindosonic. Ongoing field work includes, a study of sandstone geomorphology in deserts, a study of weathering phenomena and tufas in the Namib, work on dune morphology and age in the United Arab Emirates, and studies of dust storms with Nick Middleton and Richard Washington.
Relevant Books and Articles at UBC Library
Goudie, A. (1982). The human impact: Man’s role in environmental change (1st MIT Press — ed.). Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Goudie, A. (1995). The changing earth: Rates of geomorphological processes. Cambridge, Mass; Oxford [England]: Blackwell.
Goudie, A. (1973). Duricrusts in tropical and subtropical landscapes. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Dr. Byers’ work focuses on the interaction of international law and politics, particularly with respect to human rights, international organizations, the use of military force, the Arctic, and Canada-United States relations. He has published six books, dozens of academic papers and more than 100 op-ed articles in international newspapers, the Globe and Mail, National Post, Toronto Star and Ottawa Citizen. Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.
Select Articles Available at UBC Library
Byers, M. (2005). War law: International law and armed conflict. London: Atlantic.
Byers, M., & Canadian Publishers Collection – non-CRKN. (2009). Who owns the arctic?: Understanding sovereignty disputes in the north. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre. [Link]
Byers, M., Ebrary Academic Complete (Canada) Subscription Collection, & Canadian Publishers Collection – non-CRKN. (2008). Intent for a nation – what is Canada for?: A relentlessly optimistic manifesto for Canada’s role in the world. Vancouver; Jackson: D&M Publishers Incorporated. [Link]
Byers, M., & Ebrary Academic Complete (Canada) Subscription Collection. (1999). Custom, power, and the power of rules: International relations and customary international law. New York; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Link]
Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the Africa Awareness Initiative. Geraldine Fraser Moleketi is a South African Politician. Former Minister of Public Service and Administration (1999 – 2008). Former member of the ANC National Executive Committee of the (2007). Following the resignation of President Thabo Mbeki in September 2008, Fraser-Moleketi was one of ten ministers who submitted their resignations. Fraser-Moleketi left South Africa to join the ANC in exile in 1980, then spent eight of ten years in exile in Zimbabwe. She returned to South Africa to set up the first legal National Office of the SACP after it’s unbanning in February 1990, where she played a central role in policy development on the transformation of welfare systems and mainstreaming of gender into government programmes. Fraser-Moleketi led the process that culminated in the ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women by the SA Government, and participated and delivered papers at numerous events and conferences on social development, gender quality and transformation of public services.
Select Articles Available at UBC Library
Fraser-Moleketi, G. (2005). The world we could win: Administering global governance. Amsterdam: IOS Press. [Link]
Fraser-Moleketi, G. J. (2012). Democratic governance at times of crisis: Rebuilding our communities and building on our citizens. International Review of Administrative Sciences, 78(2), 191-208. doi:10.1177/0020852312438524 [Link]
Fraser-Moleketi, G. (2009). Towards a common understanding of corruption in Africa. Public Policy and Administration, 24(3), 331-338. doi:10.1177/0952076709103814. [Link]
Fraser-Moleketi, J.G. (2003). Quality governance for sustainable growth and development: Introduction. International Review of Administrative Sciences, 69(4), 463-470. doi:10.1177/0020852303694003 [Link]
The study of culture and biology has long stood stratified within the social and natural sciences, a gap that physicist C.P. Snow (1959) famously called “the two cultures.” To examine the bidirectional influence of culture and genes on brain and behavior, cultural neuroscience is an emerging, interdisciplinary science examining how cultural values, practices, and beliefs shape brain function and how the human brain gives rise to cultural capacities and their transmission across micro- and macro-timescales. In this talk, Chiao presents the aims and methods of cultural neuroscience, highlights recent empirical findings in the field, and discusses the potential implications of this field for bridging the social and natural sciences. She also discusses its broad relation to public policy (e.g., interethnic ideology, environmental policy, philanthropy) and population health concerns. Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.
Biography of Speaker
Joan Chiao is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University. She studies how cultural and biological forces give rise to everyday emotion and social interaction. Research in her lab also examines how high-level factors, such as race, gender and age, affect basic cognitive, perceptual and emotional processes.
UBC Library Resources
Chiao, J. Y., & Blizinsky, K. D. (2010). Culture–gene coevolution of individualism–collectivism and the serotonin transporter gene. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 277(1681), 529-537. [Link]
Chiao, J. Y., Harada, T., Komeda, H., Li, Z., Mano, Y., Saito, D., … & Iidaka, T. (2010). Dynamic cultural influences on neural representations of the self.Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 22(1), 1-11. [Link]
Chiao, J. Y., Harada, T., Komeda, H., Li, Z., Mano, Y., Saito, D., … & Iidaka, T. (2009). Neural basis of individualistic and collectivistic views of self. Human brain mapping, 30(9), 2813-2820. [Link]
Ivanova is an Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of Alberta. She completed a M.Sc in mathematics and astronomy at Saint-Petersburg State University, then was an astrophysics graduate student at the University of Oxford. Ivanova has received numerous awards, grants, and fellowships, and most recently is the ninth recipient of the Beatrice D. Tremaine Postdoctoral Fellowship, given by the CITA council for outstanding research by a postdoctoral researcher. Her research on interacting compact binaries, and in particular on studies of neutron stars in globular clusters, lead to a significant advance in our understanding of neutron star formation channels, as well as provided the link between the theory and observations for millisecond pulsars and low-mass X-ray binaries both in our and distant galaxies. Of particular interest to Ivanova are stellar and high energy astrophysics, stellar populations, stellar dynamics, and hydrodynamics. Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.
Select Articles Available at UBC Library
Woods, T. E., & Ivanova, N. (2011). Can we trust models for adiabatic mass loss?. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 739(2), L48. [Link]
Chaichenets, S., & Ivanova, N. (2011). Common envelope: enthalpy consideration. The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 731(2), L36. [Link]
With references to the tradition of landscape painting that captures the beauty of the land and trees, Kyung’s art pieces have a surrounding landscape that serves as a backdrop to her daily life within her adopted homeland of Canada. However, through her works, she also illustrates the darker side of the landscape. Through confronting the troubling aspects of environmental pollution that threatens nature, Kyung’s art challenges the ways how habitants should intervene on the land they live on, while still allowing the appreciation of facing these societal challenges together. (Artwork featured in IKBLC Foyer & Ike’s Café Gallery). Ilsoo’s work has been featured in a number of articles, including Senior Living Magazine, the Delta Optimist, and the Chinese Canadian Artists Federation in Vancouver.
Sponsored by UBC’s School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, and the Education Library.
Free live bilingual webcast of the Summit from Montreal
for educators, librarians, teachers and students.
No registration necessary.
Thursday January 20, 2011 10:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Friday 21st, 2011, 9:30 a.m. to 2:45 p.m.
Dodson Room, Room 302, Chapman Learning Commons I.K. Barber Learning
Centre, 1961 East Mall, University of British Columbia
In 2008, a group of concerned librarians, parent activists, authors,
booksellers, teachers, publishers and corporate leaders came together
with a common goal that of developing a national reading strategy for
Canada. As a first step a National Reading Summit was launched in Toronto
and plans made for a second summit in Montreal, January 2011 and for a
third in Vancouver in 2012.
The first National Reading Summit examined reading on an international
level and explored the link between reading and engaged citizenship. This
year¹s summit in Montreal will raise several questions. How are we
supporting a culture of reading? What works? What doesn¹t, and where do
we go from here?
Be sure to join with your BC colleagues to engage in this national
reading summit.
