Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Library issues update on services for the fall term

A message from the Library.

The Library is pleased to offer the following new and expanded services this fall.

Starting September 8

• Study space at Davis Centre Library: A limited number of study carrels will be available by appointment. Campus health and safety guidance for health assessment checks, physical distancing, face coverings and sanitizing protocols will be followed to ensure student and staff safety.
• Print Pickup @ Porter: Undergraduate students can request print items which have no online equivalent from the Porter and Davis libraries and the Witer Learning Resource Centre for pickup at Dana Porter Library.
• Chat hours: Virtual reference will be available Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, noon to 9 p.m.

September 9

• Special Collections & Archives: Up to three researchers at a time (students and faculty and post doctoral fellows) can book appointments to use the collections.

Ongoing

• Digital collections: 830,000 in-copyright items from the Library's print collections are available online for all of UWaterloo through the HathiTrust Digital Library. Information about this service can be found on the ETAS information page.
• Digitization requests: Students, faculty, and staff can request digital copies of locally held print articles or book chapters not available through the HathiTrust Digital Library. Materials will be digitized within Fair Dealing guidelines or we will find a digital copy from other libraries providing this service.

On the horizon

• Print pickup service: More locations are expected to be added throughout the fall term. 
• Book delivery by mail: Mailing out of print items will be an option for faculty, graduate students and staff who are unable to make use of the print pickup service. 

Details on services will be posted on the Library's website and social media in the coming weeks. Follow the library services and operations update page for changes on all services that are being redeveloped in response to the pandemic. We look forward to supporting and engaging with you throughout the fall term.

Sustainability Office offers Sustainability Certificate

A message from the Sustainability Office.

The Sustainability Office is excited to offer the Sustainability Certificate once again to all University employees for the upcoming fall 2020 term. This series of courses is intended to help Waterloo embed sustainability into campus culture, one of the major goals of the University’s Environmental Sustainability Strategy. It includes seven modules that cover key local and global sustainability issues, what the University is doing, and tools and resources for employees to integrate sustainability into their own departments, homes, and beyond.

Sessions will be held remotely through Microsoft Teams, and registration will be managed through Workday. For a list of session dates and more information, please visit the Sustainability Certificate webpage.

The Sustainability Office has also launched an asynchronous version of the series on LEARN to support independent learning. The course will include the same content as existing sessions, but learners will complete in-course quizzes and reflections in the place of group discussions and activities. Employees can access the course under the Self Registration tab on LEARN and register using their WatIAM credentials starting Monday, September 21, 2020.

Please note that, at this time, employees can’t mix and match sessions from each stream.

Q and A with the experts: a review of Canada's COVID-19 tracing app

The University of Waterloo has a number of experts available for comment on various aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Canadians have seen tracing apps deployed all over the world with varying levels of success.

We asked Professor Mark Crowley, an expert in artificial intelligence and technology, to assess Canada’s version of the app.

How does the federal government’s tracing app work?

The main idea of the federal government’s COVID-19 app is to use Bluetooth connections and random codes generated and stored by your phone to track connections with other nearby phones that also have the app installed.

Bluetooth is short-range wireless technology, so if you are in Bluetooth range you may be in COVID range. If the app estimates you are within 2 to 3 meters of another phone, then the two phones swap random codes, generated right then, like random numbers for the lottery.

These numbers don’t tell the other phones who you are, but your phone keeps track of the numbers it shared out, and the numbers it received in, for two weeks. Since all the codes are random, each phone only knows the codes it has received from nearby phones, not that phone’s owner or even where they were when they received it.

The most useful part of this app for individuals is what happens next when you or someone else receive a positive COVID test. At that point, the diagnosed person receives another random one-time code from the health provider. This one-time code is essentially a proof of infection ticket for the person who tested positive, but it has no identifying information. Once this one-time code is entered into the app on a phone, that phone now has proof that its owner is infected.

Then, if you give your phone permission, it will send the list of recent random codes it sent out in the past two weeks to the central server.

Every once in a while, your phone checks the internet and downloads new codes for confirmed diagnoses from the central server. If your phone sees a code like 37423798473289 on the server, for example, and it received that code from someone in town a few days ago, then your phone will alert you that you are at risk of having been infected.

Why should people use the app?

We all need to work together as a society to get through living with this disease until reliable treatments and prevention methods are available. While treatment is improving every day and vaccine trials are racing ahead, it may be years before we have a real grip on how to minimize death and suffering from COVID-19.

So the most impactful thing we can do right now is minimize spread. This requires masks, social distancing, and tracing cases back to their source so everyone at risk can self-isolate while they recover or find out for sure if they have it. This last point is what the app can help tremendously with.

We should see it as one tool, among many, in society’s toolbox. It isn’t perfect, and it won’t reach everyone, but it will reach a lot of people.

What are the security and data privacy concerns about these apps and do you have these concerns about the Canadian app?

I am using the app, and my family is using the app. I do not have concerns about its privacy controls. However, people have raised many legitimate concerns about these kinds of apps in other countries and even the rollout of this particular one in Canada.

One of the most pressing challenges for such an app is that it cannot reach everyone. The app relies on a software layer built by Apple and Google to share as little information as possible while allowing simple contact tracing. Any app using this layer cannot access location or identity from the phone. So, the federal or provincial government cannot track your location or identity using this app.

The app depends on a software technology that is only available on more recent phones (Android: 6.0+, iOS:13.5+). This means many Canadians with older or un-upgraded phones, estimated at around 11 per cent of the mobile phones in the country, will not be capable of running the app. (via a quick calculation based on Statcounter Global Stats)

Mark Crowley is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo and a member of the Waterloo Institute for Artifical Intelligence (waterloo.ai). His research focuses on developing new algorithms within the fields of Reinforcement Learning, Deep Learning and Ensemble Methods.

Undergraduate student town hall today and other notes

The Undergraduate Student Town Hall takes place today (virtually, of course) from 1:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Registered student attendees will have received a livestream link to the event.

Plant Operations has announced some additional elevator maintenance shutdowns:

• Elevator 1 in Burt Matthews Hall (BMH) will be down for maintenance beginning today at 12 noon for two hours.    

• Elevators 1-1 and 1-2 in Doug Wright Engineering (DWE) will be offline for approximately 2 hours each on Friday, August 28 beginning at 8:00 a.m. and ending at 12 noon.

Today is the deadline for students to get "Fees Arranged" for the fall 2020 term. Finance has information on how students can pay get Fees Arranged on its website.