Bob Evans - Our Energy Future – Can We Make it More Sustainable?

Bob Evans – Our Energy Future – Can We Make it More Sustainable?

March 20, 2012

Robert Evans is Professor of Mechanical Engineering at The University of British Columbia (UBC). He obtained a B.A.Sc. degree in mechanical engineering from UBC, an M.A.Sc. from the University of Toronto and a Ph.D. from Cambridge University. Dr. Evans has served as Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and was founding Director of the Clean Energy Research Centre at UBC. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, and the Society of Automotive Engineers. Dr. Evans is the author of “Fueling Our Future: an Introduction to Sustainable Energy”, published by Cambridge University Press. The book is also available in Chinese, Arabic, and Turkish, and was short-listed for the 2007 Donner Prize for the best book on public policy published by a Canadian author.

Relevant Books and Articles at UBC Library

Kumar, V., Haapala, K. R., Rivera, J. L., Hutchins, M. J., Endres, W. J., Gershenson, J. K., . . . Sutherland, J. W. (2005). Infusing sustainability principles into manufacturing/mechanical engineering curricula. Journal of Manufacturing Systems, 24(3), 215-225. doi:10.1016/S0278-6125(06)80011-7 [Link]

Davim, J. P., & SpringerLINK ebooks – Engineering. (2014). Modern mechanical engineering: Research, development and education (1; 2014 ed.). Dordrecht: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-45176-8 [Link]

Holloway, M. D., & Rudd, O. (2013). Energy sustainability: Fracking : The operations and environmental consequences of hydraulic fracturing. John Wiley & Sons. [Link]

Gheorghe, A. V., Masera, M., Katina, P. F., & SpringerLINK ebooks – Engineering. (2014). Infranomics sustainability, engineering design and governance (2014th ed.). Cham: Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-02493-6 [Link]

UBC Library Research Guides

Sustainability

Mechanical Engineering

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Michiah Prull – Beyond awareness: the power of public narrative

March 20, 2012

Webcast sponsored by Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by Common Energy UBC’s NOW (No Other World) Forum. Michiah Prull works as a Community Leadership Coordinator at the David Suzuki Foundation. Michiah has previously worked on President Obama’s 2008 Presidential campaign, thus he is very knowledgeable about engaging people in a cause. In this lecture, Michiah makes the case for focusing on telling a narrative in order to engage people in the climate crisis.

Relevant Books and Articles at UBC Library

Miller, H. T. (2014). Narrative competition in public discourse. Administrative Theory & Praxis, 36(3), 287-307. doi:10.2753/ATP1084-1806360301 [Link]

Green, M. C., & Brock, T. C. (2000). The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(5), 701-721. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.79.5.701 [Link]

Journet, D., Boehm, B. A., & Britt, C. E. (2011). Narrative acts: Rhetoric, race and identity, knowledge. New York: Hampton Press.

UBC Library Research Guides

Education

Language and Lingusitics

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Richard Carpiano – Measuring Community Social Capital in British Columbia: An Eco-metric Approach for Population Health Research

March 20, 2012

Webcast sponsored by Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by Green College. Richard Carpiano’s interests centers on the sociology of health and illness, particularly community and individual socioeconomic influences on physical and mental health. Research- and policy-related concern with how community social and physical conditions serve as determinants of health has necessitated improved measurement of these contexts. Consistent with this need, there has been increased interest in “ecometrics”—the scientific approach to measuring ecologic settings—for creating reliable and valid measures of community context derived from survey-based ratings of community conditions by local residents. Existing research using ecometric techniques, however, has been conducted in a limited number of (mostly urban and non-Canadian) contexts. This talk will discuss an interdisciplinary study that applied ecometric approaches to creating several measures of community social cohesion and social capital. Using survey data collected from residents of 100 British Columbia communities, we evaluate separately for urban and rural communities: (a) the degree to which the reliability of specific ecologic measures is contingent upon the number of “raters” in a community who are providing information and (b) the validity of the resulting measures. The implications of these findings for guiding future studies of community context—for population health and other areas of focus—is also discussed.

Relevant Books and Articles at UBC Library

Carpiano, R. M. (2006). Toward a neighborhood resource-based theory of social capital for health: Can Bourdieu and sociology help? Social Science & Medicine, 62(1), 165-175. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2005.05.020 [Link]

Carpiano, R. (2014). When should one (dis)trust trust measures? Response to Lindstrom and Sawada. Social Science & Medicine, 116, 239-240. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.06.032 [Link]

UBC Library Research Guides

Population and Public Health

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Joan Mitchell – The Dewey Ecosystem

March 20, 2012

Webcast sponsored by Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by SLAIS. Joan S. Mitchell is Editor-in-Chief of the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system at OCLC. There is a rich ecosystem associated with the Dewey Decimal Classification beyond what is visible in the iconic library shelf application of the system. Dewey numbers are associated with physical and digital content in collections around the world, with MARCXML-encoded content in current DDC translations, and with controlled vocabularies in English plus a host of other languages. The publication of DDC 23 in 2011 and Abridged Edition 15 in 2012, the introduction of a generic WebDewey interface and a new model for distributing and ingesting Dewey data in a variety of formats, and the emergence of several Dewey linked data initiatives will serve as the springboard to look at Dewey’s value proposition as a knowledge organization system in the current information environment.She has been closely affiliated with the DDC since 1985, when she became a member of the Decimal Classification Editorial Policy Committee. She chaired the committee from 1992 until her appointment as Dewey editor in 1993.

Select Articles Available at UBC Library

Dewey, M., & Mitchell, J. S. (1997). Abridged edition 13 Dewey decimal classification: Relocations and reductions, comparative tables, equivalence tables, reused numbers. Albany, NY: Forest Press.

Mitchell, J. S., & Panzer, M. (2013). Dewey linked data: Making connections with old friends and new acquaintances. JLIS.it: Italian Journal of Library and Information Science, 4(1), 177-199. doi:10.4403/jlis.it-5467 [Link]

Chan, L. M., & Mitchell, J. S. (2003). Dewey decimal classification: Principles and application. Dublin, Ohio: OCLC.

UBC Library Research Guides

Library, Archival, and Information Science

Learning Through Literacy and Technology

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Bob Kull – Explorations in Solitude and Interdisciplinary Research

March 20, 2012

In this talk, Dr. Bob Kull reflects on and shares his experience of spending a year in deep wilderness solitude, and how he shaped the experience into a doctoral dissertation. He explores the process of transformations of consciousness, and discusses how such transformations can affect our relationship with ourselves, with other people and with the non-human world. He will also offer thoughts on how we can integrate our personal spiritual explorations into academic work. Webcast sponsored by Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by Green College.

Speaker

Dr. Kull has spent years wandering North and South America, working as a scuba instructor, wilderness guide, construction worker, dishwasher, truck driver, bartender, painter, firefighter, and professor. He began undergraduate studies at age forty and now holds a Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia.

Select Articles and Books from UBC Library

Long, C., & Averill, J. (2003). Solitude: An exploration of benefits of being alone. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 33(1), 21-21. doi:10.1111/1468-5914.00204 [Link]

Repko, A. F. (2012). Interdisciplinary research: Process and theory. Thousand Oaks, Calif: SAGE Publications.

UBC Library Guides

Education

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George Hoberg – Leap of faith: overcoming political obstacles to climate action

March 20, 2012

Webcast sponsored by Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by Common Energy UBC’s NOW (No Other World) Forum. Dr.George Hoberg specializes in environmental and natural resource policy and governance. He received a BS from UC Berkeley, and his PhD from MIT. A political scientist by training, Dr.Hoberg taught public policy and American politics at UBC for 13 years before joining the Faculty of Forestry full time in 2001.His research interests include energy policy, forest policy, and more generally the design of policies and institutions to promote sustainability. In this lecture, Dr.Hoberg speaks about his transformation from an academic to an activist, a transformation that was guided as the gravity of the climate crisis has become more apparent. As he tried to come to a deeper understanding about humanity’s failure to act yet on climate change, he came to an insight that transformed his stance: “When you consider the structure of the climate challenge as a public goods and public choice dilemma, you can see that if we are guided by short term material thinking we will simply be incapable of rising to the challenge of taking the concerted action sufficient to avoid dangerous climate change. The logic of the climate policy analyst is dominated by this economic rationality that can’t generate the necessary solutions. To envision a capacity to act you need to take a leap of faith that enough citizens and leaders are willing to act on moral, not economic grounds. You take climate action not because it is in your or your nation’s interests, but because it is the right thing to do.” He convinces us that we need to start acting that way ourselves. He can be followed on twitter @ghoberg or on his blog, http://greenpolicyprof.org/wordpress.

Relevant Books and Articles at UBC Library

Hoberg, G., Scholars Portal Books: Canadian Electronic Library, & Canadian Publishers Collection. (2002). Capacity for choice: Canada in a new North America. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. doi:10.3138/9781442672697 [Link]

Hoberg, G., & Meadowcroft, J. (2015). Climate action. Alternatives, 41(1), 58-60. [Link]

Hoberg, G., British Columbia Government EBook Collection, & British Columbia. Ministry of Forests. (2002). Government’s response to public consultation report. Victoria, B.C.: Ministry of Forests. [Link]

Hoberg, G., & Canadian Public Policy Collection. (2011). Export question: Designing policy for British Columbia electricity trade. Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions, University of Victoria. [Link]

UBC Library Research Guides

Sustainability

Political Science

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Amber Prince, Elisabeth Ormandy, Laura Janara, Michael McDonald – Governance of Nonhuman Animals at a University in a Democratic Society: Part 1 Cultivating Practical Wisdom

March 15, 2012

Webcast sponsored by Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by Green College.This event will explore issues of practical wisdom and deliberation, including the problem of how, in the context of democratic deliberation and inclusive democracy, humans might attend to the needs and standpoints of nonhuman animals. On each panel, each speaker will speak for 15 minutes followed by 30 minutes of discussion.

Select Articles Available at UBC Library

Ormandy, E. (2010). The lifecycle of the farm pig. Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, 13(3), 273-275. doi:10.1080/10888705.2010.483898. [Link]

Ormandy, E. H., & Schuppli, C. A. (2014). Public attitudes toward animal research: A review. Animals, 4(3), 391-408. doi:10.3390/ani4030391. [Link]

Ormandy, E., Dale, J., & Griffin, G. (2011). Genetic engineering of animals: Ethical issues, including welfare concerns. Canadian Veterinary Journal, 52(5), 544-550. [Link]

Ormandy, E., Dale, J., & Griffin, G. (2013). The use of genetically-engineered animals in science: Perspectives of canadian animal care committee members. Alternatives to Laboratory Animals, 41(2), 173-180.

Ormandy, E., Schuppli, C., & Weary, D. (2012). Factors affecting people’s acceptance of the use of zebrafish and mice in research. Alternatives to Laboratory Animals, 40(6), 321-333.

UBC Library Research Guides

Medical Genetics

Global Health – Legal Sources

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Robert Majzels and Erín Mouré – Play Chthonics: New Canadian Readings

March 13, 2012

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by Green College.

Robert Majzels is a novelist, playwright, poet and translator, born in Montréal, Québec, and is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Calgary. He has published four novels: Hellman’s Scrapbook, City of Forgetting, Apikoros Sleuth, and The Humbugs Diet. In 2007, he was awarded the Alcuin Society Prize for Excellence in Book Design for the limited edition of his book, Apikoros Sleuth. This Night the Kapo, an award-winning full-length play, was produced at the Berkley Street Theatre in Toronto, in March 2004. He was attributed the Governor General’s Award of Canada for his translation of France Daigle’s Just Fine in 2000. With Erín Moure, Robert has translated several books of poetry by Nicole Brossard, including Notebook of Roses & Civilization, for which they were nominated for the Governor General’s Award for Translation and the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2008. With Dr. Claire Huot, he has produced a series of translations of Chinese classical poetry into visual texts, which will appear in book form in 2011.

Erín Mouré writes mainly in English, albeit multilingually. She considers translation to be part of her practice, and has translated Nicole Brossard (with Robert Majzels), Galician poet Chus Pato, Chilean Andrés Ajens, as well as the famed modernist Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, among others. In her own most recent books, O Cadoiro and O Resplandor (both from Anansi), poetry becomes hybrid and even the author’s name and signature are altered and invented in the process of dealing with grief, with love, with language. Here, names of the poets blur, sexes are indeterminate, modern and ancient levels of language co-exist, the palimpsest is pockmarked, and we sometimes don’t know any more who sings to us: it must be the book.

Resources available at UBC Library

Brossard, Nicole. (2013). Piano blanc. English White piano. Translated by Robert Majzels and Erin Moure. Toronto, Coach Book House. [Available at Koerner Library – PR9257.R586 P5213 2013]

Brossard, Nicole. (2007). Cahier de roses & de civilisation, English Notebook of roses and civilization. Translated by Rober]t Majzels and Erin Mouré. Toronto, Coach Book House. [Available at Koerner Library – PR9257.R586 C3413 2007]

Majzels, Robert. (1997). City of forgetting : a novel. Toronto, Mercury Press. [Available at Koerner Library – PS8576.A525 C587 1997]

Majzels, Robert. (1992). Hellman’s scrapbook: a novel. Toronto, Dunvegan. [Available at Koerner Library – PS8576.A525H4 1992]

UBC Library Research Guides

Library, Archival, and Information Science

Canadian Studies

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Barry Schwartz – Doing the Right Thing for the Right Reason: Why Incentives Are No Substitute for Character

March 13, 2012

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and funded by the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies Distinguished Scholar in Residence Program, Green College, and the UBC Centre for the Study of Democratic Institution. Barry Schwartz is Dorwin Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Action, Swarthmore College. Schwartz studies the link between economics and psychology, offering startling insights into modern life. Lately, working with Ken Sharpe, he’s studying wisdom This talk is part of a Series on Practical Wisdom organized by Maxwell Cameron, UBC Political Science and 2011 Wall Distinguished Professor.

Select Articles Available at UBC Library

Grant, A. M., & Schwartz, B. (2011). Too Much of a Good Thing The Challenge and Opportunity of the Inverted U. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(1), 61-76. [Link]

Dar-Nimrod, I., Rawn, C. D., Lehman, D. R., & Schwartz, B. (2009). The maximization paradox: The costs of seeking alternatives. Personality and Individual Differences, 46(5), 631-635. [Link]

Schwartz, B. (2000). Self-determination: The tyranny of freedom. American psychologist, 55(1), 79. [Link]

UBC Library Research Guides

Philosophy

Psychology

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Benjamin C. Amick III – Population Health Interventions in the Labour Market: A View From Texas

March 8, 2012

Webcast sponsored by Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by Green College. Dr. Benjamin C. Amick III is scientific director and senior scientist at the Institute for Work & Health. He is also a professor of behavioral sciences and epidemiology in the School of Public Health af the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.

Amick completed his doctorial training at the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Health Education, The Johns Hopkins University, School of Hygiene and Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland in 1986. Amick’s current research interests include the social epidemiology of work and health; labour markets and worksite intervention research; occupational health services; outcomes assessment and the measurement of work disability and productivity; ergonomics and musculoskeletal disorders; the prevention of work-related illness and injury; and social inequalities and social change.

Select Articles Available at UBC Library

Amick, B. C., Canadian Health Research Collection, Institute for Work & Health, & Canadian Electronic Library (Firm). (2011). Benchmarking organizational leading indicators for the prevention and management of injuries and illnesses final report. Institute for Work & Health.

Amick, B. C., & Canadian Health Research Collection. (2008). Systematic review of the role of occupational health and safety interventions in the prevention of upper extremity musculoskeletal symptoms, signs, disorders, injuries, claims and lost time. Institute for Work & Health.

Amick, B. C., & Canadian Health Research Collection. (2006). Interventions in health-care settings to protect musculoskeletal health: A systematic review: Full report. Institute for Work & Health.

Amick, B. C. (1995). Society and health. New York: Oxford University Press.

UBC Library Research Guides

Occupational and Environmental Health

Population and Public Health

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