Jasper Wall - Eddington, Ryle & Hoyle: How a major discovery was lost in confusion and noise

Jasper Wall – Eddington, Ryle & Hoyle: How a major discovery was lost in confusion and noise

November 1, 2010

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.

Biography of Speaker

Jasper Wall is Adjunct Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of British Columbia. His research topics are focused on origin and evolution of galaxies, active galactic nuclei, unified models, statistics in astronomy.

Select Articles Available at UBC Library

De Zotti, G., Massardi, M., Negrello, M., & Wall, J. (2010). Radio and millimeter continuum surveys and their astrophysical implications. The Astronomy and Astrophysics Review, 18(1-2), 1-65. [Link]

Gendre, M. A., Wall, J. V., & Best, P. (2009). Evolution of AGN Space Densities and the Fanaroff–Riley Dichotomy. Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union, 5(S267), 109-109. [Link]

Kellermann, K., Orchiston, W., Davies, R., Gurvits, L., Ishiguro, M., Lequeux, J., … & van Woerden, H. (2011). Division X, XII/Commission 40, 41/Working Group Radio Astronomy. Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union,7(T28A), 311-313. [Link]

UBC Library Research Guides

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Physics

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Andrew Pask, Baldwin Wong, Daniel Hiebert and Hayne Wai – Citizenship without the Nation – Relevance: The Nation and the City

October 29, 2010

The Citizenship Without the Nation conference was a two day conference held at the Liu Institute for Global Issues from October 29 – 30, 2010. Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. The conference explored how regional and local dialogues intersect with the national discourse on citizenship. There is significant work on citizenship at the national level, but the same issues take on very different meanings in the Vancouver context given the mix of residents in the city, the languages they speak, and the city’s geographic location. Sessions considered how people belong to neighbourhoods, cities, regions and nations. Participants were asked about the possibility of belonging to several communities at once and interrogated what happens when the promise of national citizenship fails to deliver locally. The counterpoint was also addressed: what happens when the local fails to live up to the national ideal?

Chair: Ellen Woodsworth, Vancouver City Councillor

Daniel Hiebert, Professor of Geography, University of British Columbia
Baldwin Wong, Social Planner, City of Vancouver
Andrew Pask, Director, Vancouver Public Space Network
Hayne Wai, Past President, Chinese Canadian Historical Society of British Columbia

Select Articles Available at UBC Library

Hiebert, D., & Canadian Public Policy Collection. (2009). Economic integration of immigrants in Metro Vancouver. Metropolis British Columbia. [Link]

Wong, B., & Fong, K. (2012). Dialogues between Fist Nations, urban Aboriginals and immigrant communities in Vancouver. Canadian Issues, 19. [Link]

Wai, H. Y. (1998). Vancouver Chinatown, 1960-1980: A community perspective. Seattle, Washington: Canadian Studies Center, Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington.

UBC Library Research Guides

Economics

Community & Regional Planning

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Ann Curry – "Silencing by Shouting Down: Acceptable Censorship in 2010?" webcast online

October 28, 2010

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies (SLAIS). Dr. Curry’s research interests include Censorship and Intellectual Freedom, Information Ethics, Library Architecture, Public Libraries, Collection Management, and Issues in LIS Education. She is currently Professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Alberta.

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Marie-Françoise André – Drivers of environmental change: the case of the Arctic

October 28, 2010

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by St. John’s College Drivers of Environmental Change Lecture Series. The circumarctic permafrost region is known as a climate-change hotspot, with special reference to parts of Alaska and Siberia which display a warming trend of 5°C for the last century. Moreover, the contemporary economic development of Arctic regions has brought dramatic expansion of infrastructure (e.g. extraction of fossil fuels and mineral resources). In this context, permafrost thaw appears as the driving force of landscape change, soil disturbance and infrastructure damage, but is not the only expression of the current environmental change. Four main topics will be discussed: (1) The identification of geoindicators of contemporary environmental changes in the Arctic; (2) The interplay of natural and human drivers of these changes; (3) The negative and positive implications of the current environmental changes in circumarctic regions; (4) The geomorphological services to be offered to mitigate or prevent the negative effects.

Relevant Books and Articles at UBC Library

Fort, M., André, M., SpringerLink (Online service), & SpringerLINK ebooks – Earth and Environmental Science. (2014; 2013). Landscapes and landforms of France (1; 2014 ed.). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-7022-5 [Link]

André, M. (1986). Dating slope deposits and estimating rates of rock wall retreat in northwest spitsbergen by lichenometry. Geografiska Annaler.Series A, Physical Geography, 68(1/2), 65-75. [Link]

André, M. (2002). Rates of postglacial rock weathering on glacially scoured outcrops (abisko-riksgränsen area, 68°N). Geografiska Annaler.Series A.Physical Geography, 150-150. [Link]

UBC Library Research Guides

Sustainability

Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences

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Henry Yu – Our Future as a Half-Chinese City: Lessons from History

October 27, 2010

Dr. Henry Yu specializes in the study of trans-Pacific migration and settlement. Yu is involved in the collective effort to reimagine the history of Vancouver and of British Columbia through the concept of “Pacific Canada,” a perspective that focuses on how migrants from Asia, Europe, and other parts of the Americas engaged with each other and with First Nations peoples historically. He is concurrently an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of British Columbia as well as a faculty member of the Asian American Studies Centre at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Yu received his B.A. in the Honours History program from the University of British Columbia, and went on to earn his M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University where he pursued studies in History. Dr. Yu has held Visiting Professorships at Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania, and research fellowships at Wesleyan University, the University of California Humanities Research Institute, and research grants from the Social Science Humanities Research Council of Canada. Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.

Select Articles Available at UBC Library

Yu, Henry. (2011) “The Rhythms of the Trans-Pacific” and “The Intermittent Rhythms of the Cantonese Pacific,” in Donna Gabaccia, Dirk Hoerder, editors, Connecting Seas and Connecting Ocean Rims: Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans and China Seas Migrations from the 1830s to the 1930s. (Leiden: Brill, 2011). [Link]

Yu, Henry. (2011). “Nurturing Dialogues between First Nations, Urban Aboriginal, and Immigrant Communities in Vancouver,” in Ashok Mathur, Jonathan Dewar, Mike DeGagné, editors, Cultivating Canada: Reconciliation through the Lens of Cultural Diversity. (Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2011):300-308. [Link]

Yu, Henry. (2009). “Global Migrants and the New Pacific Canada,” International Journal. (Autumn, 2009):147-162. [Link]

UBC Library Research Guides

Chinese Canadians

History

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Lawrence Zbikowski – First of a Double Feature: Of Exactitude in Science: Music and Analogy

October 25, 2010

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by Green College’s Thematic Series: Expressive Performance in Human Interactions. Lawrence Zbikowski is an Associate Professor of Music at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1993. His principal research interests involve applying recent work in cognitive science (especially that done by cognitive linguists and cognitive psychologists) to various problems confronted by music scholars, with a particular focus on music theory and analysis.

Select Articles Available at UBC Library

Zbikowski, L. M. (2012). Music, Language, and What Falls in Between.Ethnomusicology, 56(1), 125-131. [Link]

Zbikowski, L. M. (2012). Listening to Music. Draft, to appear in Speaking of Music. Eds. Keith Chapin and Andrew Clark. Bronx: Fordham University Press. Web, 13. [Link]

Zbikowski, L. M. (2009). Music, language, and multimodal metaphor.Multimodal metaphor, 359-381. [Link]

UBC Library Research Guides

Linguistics

Music

Psychology

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Raymond Gibbs – Second of a Double Feature: Metaphor and Embodied Cognition

October 25, 2010

Raymond Gibbs is currently the Chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Gibbs’ research interests are in the fields of experimental psycholinguistics and cognitive science. His work concerns a range of theoretical issues, ranging from questions about the role of embodied experience in thought and language, to looking at people’s use and understanding of figurative language (e.g., metaphor, irony, idioms). Gibbs is especially interested in bodily experience and linguistic meaning. Much of Gibbs’ research is motivated by theories of meaning in philosophy, linguistics, and comparative literature. Most generally, his research interests have wide interdisciplinary application to all fields concerned with mind, meaning and interpretation. Gibbs has a Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego in Cognitive Psychology, Psycholinguistics; an M.A. from the University of California, San Diego in Experimental Psychology; and a B.A. from Hampshire College in Cognitive Science. Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by Green College as part of its Thematic Series: Expressive Performance in Human Interactions.

Select Articles Available at UBC Library

Gibbs Jr, R. W. (2013). Artistic understanding as embodied simulation. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36(02), 143-144. [Link]

Gibbs Jr, R. W. (2013). The real complexities of psycholinguistic research on metaphor. Language Sciences, 40, 45-52. [Link]

Gibbs Jr, R. W. (2012). Are ironic acts deliberate?. Journal of Pragmatics,44(1), 104-115. [Link]

UBC Library Research Guides

Language and Linguistics

Linguistics

Psychology

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Ann Curry – Silencing by Shouting Down: Acceptable Censorship in 2010?

October 21, 2010

Select Articles Available at UBC Library

Curry, A. (1997). The limits of tolerance: Censorship and intellectual freedom in public libraries. Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press.

Curry, A. (2005). If I ask, will they answer? evaluating public library reference service to gay and lesbian youth. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 45(1), 65-75. [Link]

Curry, A. (2003). Opening hours: The contest between diminishing resources and a 24/7 world. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 29(6), 375-385. doi:10.1016/j.jal.2003.08.004. [Link]

Curry, A. (2005). Unreliable research: Are librarians liable? IFLA Journal, 35(1), 28-34. [Link]

UBC Library Research Guides

Library, Archival, and Information Science

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Regula Qureshi – Performance Traditions in South Asian Islam

October 21, 2010

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the Asian Studies Department. A scholar of Urdu and Hindi language and literature and of the art music of India and Pakistan, Qureshi has given numerous lecture-recitals on sarangi, Indian music, and Muslim chant in Canada, the US, Pakistan, India, and Western Europe. She has contributed articles to The New Grove Dictionary and to the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada, and has served as co-editor of the Journal of Ethnomusicological Research, the British Forum of Ethnomusicology, and the Indian music journal Bansuri.

Author’s Titles at UBC Library

Qureshi, R. (2007). Master musicians of India: Hereditary Sarangi players speak. New York: Routledge. [Link]

Waugh, E. H., Abu-Laban, S. M., & Qureshi, R. (1991). Muslim families in north America. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press. [Link]

Qureshi, R. (1986). Sufi music of India and Pakistan: Sound, context, and meaning in Qawwali. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Link]

UBC Library Research Guides

South Asian Studies Resources

Music

Urdu

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Maya Jasanoff – An Imperial Disaster? The Loyalist Diaspora after the American Revolution

October 20, 2010

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the UBC History department. Part of the “Disasters and Diasporas: Entangled Histories of Environment and Empire” Series of the UBC History Department Maya Jasanoff’s teaching and research focus on the history of modern Britain and the British Empire, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries. Her first book, Edge of Empire: Lives, Culture, and Conquest in the East, 1750-1850, investigates British expansion in India and Egypt through the lives of art collectors. It was awarded the 2005 Duff Cooper Prize and was a book of the year selection in numerous British publications including The Economist, The Observer, and The Sunday Times. She has recently completed a new book, Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World (forthcoming February 2011), which provides the first global history of the loyalists who fled the United States after the American Revolution, and resettled in Canada, the Caribbean, Britain, Sierra Leone, and beyond. Her current research explores the worlds of Joseph Conrad. Jasanoff has been an ACLS Charles A. Ryskamp Fellow, a Cullman Center Fellow at the New York Public Library, and a Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress. Her essays and reviews have appeared in the London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, and The New York Times Magazine.

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