Wednesday, July 13, 2022

W Store is now an authorized Owl Labs Reseller

A message from Print + Retail Solutions

W Store is pleased to announce that we are now an authorized vendor for the Owl Labs® products. This includes Meeting Owl 3, which comes with a 360-degree camera, mic, and speaker to create the most immersive meeting experience for hybrid teams.

The Meeting Owl 3 has a 360-degree panoramic fisheye camera view that shows optimal room view and face-to-face view, and auto-focuses on whoever is speaking; three built-in speakers for 360-degree coverage; and clear in-room Smart Mics to equalize speaker volume and amplify quiet voices. There is the option of pairing two Meeting Owls to expand video and audio range up to 28 feet. It supports most video conferencing platforms including Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet.

You can find these products online and in W Store in South Campus Hall. To purchase Owl Labs® products directly from W Store, or to schedule a demo and learn more, please contact John Jaray (john.jaray@uwaterloo.ca). Purchasing from W Store with a departmental account number ensures that you save the taxes and receive free delivery anywhere on campus.

Professor's image of droplets in running for national award

Zhao Pan and a collaborator captured this image of colourful droplets suspended from crossed fibres.

This article was originally published on the Faculty of Engineering's news site.

A professor at Waterloo Engineering is in the running in a national contest designed to showcase striking images captured by researchers.

Zhao Pan, a professor of mechanical and mechatronics engineering, is co-creator of one of 20 images in the finals of the 2022 edition of Science Exposed, a contest organized by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

His photograph, produced with collaborator Floriane Weyer of the Université libre de Bruxelles in Belgium, shows colorful droplets suspended from fibres crossed at a variety of angles.

The image was captured during research - inspired by huge droplets Pan observed hanging from the tips of leaves on cypress trees - into how the angles at which fibers cross affect the volume of droplets they can suspend.

Fraser King, a PhD candidate in geography at the University of Waterloo, is also a finalist for an image of a snapshot in time of a deep learning neural network’s complex brain for calculating precipitation.

Voting for the People’s Choice award is now open at: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ScienceExposed-PreuveParLimage/past_winners-images_des_gagnants_eng.asp.

Remembering Carl Turkstra, Engineering’s first PhD graduate

Nadine Ibrahim, the Turkstra Chair in Urban Engineering, and Carl Turkstra.

By Carol Truemner. This article was originally published on Waterloo News.

Carl Turkstra (PhD ’63, civil engineering) died May 22 after a distinguished career as an academic who transformed building codes followed by one as a successful business owner.  

When Turkstra joined the Faculty’s newly launched PhD program in the late 1950s, building codes aimed to achieve absolute safety.

Turkstra proposed a radical alternative in his doctoral research work: apply risk analysis instead.

Doug Wright, then-dean of the Faculty of Engineering, ensured Turkstra’s resulting thesis landed on all the right desks, paving the way to an illustrious academic career that spanned three countries and two decades.

Turkstra, who was awarded Waterloo Engineering’s first doctorate, twice earned the American Society of Civil Engineering’s State of the Art Award, helped to transform building codes around the world and developed what is now known as Turkstra’s Rule for load construction in structural design.

His academic achievements were recognized in 1997 with Waterloo Engineering’s Alumni Achievement Medal for Academic Excellence.

In 1989, he gave up his academic career to take over his family’s Hamilton-based lumber business.

"His timing could have been better as he arrived during the most significant construction recession since the Depression," his obituary reads.

Carl buckled down and transformed the company. He cared passionately about the employees at Turkstra Lumber and was instrumental in introducing benefits and a pension plan that was, at the time, unheard of in the retail lumber industry."

In his retirement, Turkstra launched three philanthropic foundations. The Turkstra Foundation focuses on disaster relief; Your Canada, Your Constitution advocates for political reform; and the Incite Foundation supports the arts in Hamilton, ON.

“I can’t sing or dance or any of that stuff, but I understand how important arts and culture are,” Turkstra said in a 2017 interview.

Nor did he forget his first calling. In 2017, he began working with Waterloo Engineering to fund an endowed chair and graduate program in urban engineering. The Turkstra Chair in Urban Engineering is currently held by Nadine Ibrahim, a civil and environmental engineering lecturer.

An urban engineering speaker series named for Turkstra was launched by Waterloo Engineering in 2019.

Turkstra is survived by his wife, Kate, son Peter (Karen Turkstra), daughter Jennifer Turkstra (Matthew Soar) and four grandchildren.

“Always the engineer, he asked that his ashes be spread at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge,” his obituary reads. “Second only to his love for his wife, he loved his engineering ring.”

Value of cycling lanes in the eye of the beholder

Despite a growing body of research that shows the addition of cycling lanes in a neighbourhood positively correlates with increases in residential property values, the public perception of this value varies dramatically by neighbourhood type. 

The study was conducted by Emma McDougall and Brian Doucet of the University of Waterloo’s School of Planning. It was part of a larger research project co-led by Doucet, and Dawn Parker and was funded in part by the cities of Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge and the Region of Waterloo. 

McDougall and Doucet interviewed real estate agents and developers in three adjacent mid-size cities—Cambridge, Kitchener, and Waterloo. By analysing the knowledge, perceptions, and experiences of those on the front lines of the housing market, they gained insight into overarching market trends and buyer preferences and how cycling infrastructure and cycling culture is sold and marketed in different types of neighbourhoods.

Their central finding was the stark difference between urban core, and suburban attitudes towards cycling, influenced by lifestyle, buyer demographics and build form. 

“Realtors and developers in the dense urban cores are able to market cycling as a means of transportation and for its contribution to a hip urban lifestyle,” said McDougall. “This is in opposition to the sprawling suburbs, where incoming buyers prioritize internal amenities — though cycling was seen as a positive for recreation and a healthy lifestyle for some suburbanites.”

The researchers argue this study can help planners and policymakers interested in building cycling infrastructure look beyond cycling statistics and explore both the different attitudes towards cycling and mobility and the spatially uneven networks that exist between car-oriented suburbs and the compact urban cores.

“Our analysis of the way in which cycling is positioned in the home buying and home building process in different parts of the city can help interpret the complex and, in some cases, contradictory ways in which cycling is part of a neighbourhood’s identity,” said McDougall.

The study titled Polarized Paths: ‘Selling’ Cycling in City and Suburb was recently published in Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie.

Sustainable IT website launches

A message from Information Systems & Technology (IST).

The website for the University’s Sustainable IT initiative is now live at https://uwaterloo.ca/sustainable-technology/. 

This site provides a guide to Sustainable IT for the University of Waterloo, describing what Sustainable IT looks like and providing important best practices that Waterloo can take, both as individuals and as a campus.

Website feedback, or questions about the University’s Sustainable IT initiative can be directed to Andrew McAlorum, Director, Client Services, Information Systems & Technology (IST).

Concept $5K finals tomorrow and other notes

The Concept $5K finals will be taking place tomorrow, July 14 as student teams make their pitches to a panel of judges. The event will take place at 12 noon in SLC 2143.

"The competition offers the opportunity for University of Waterloo student led teams with innovative solutions and high potential business ideas to showcase their hard work and compete for grant funding," says a note from Concept. Nine finalists will be competing.

Learn more about the finalists on Concept's blog.

As part of the Water Institute's WaterTalks lecture series, Poornima Unnikrishnan, Researcher, Department of Systems Design Engineering will present: Atmospheric moisture tracking on Tuesday, July 19.

"Atmospheric moisture recycling is the process of water evaporating from the earth’s surface, flowing through the atmosphere, and re-entering land as precipitation. Agriculture, a multibillion-dollar industry, is highly sensitive to weather and climate," says the talk's abstract. "The decisions related to agricultural production at all phases (near-term, mid-term, or long-term decisions) are highly dependent on the water availability to the crops. The identification of the ocean and land surface that contributes evaporation to a region’s precipitation can be of significant importance as they can be addressed and incorporated into water resources management tools and frameworks. The changes in the land use patterns and earth’s surface temperatures can alter the moisture recycle pattern across the globe which can cause adverse impacts on tropical forests, agricultural production, river flows, and wetlands. Modeling the process of atmospheric moisture transport and identifying source-sink relationships on a large scale is relatively a new research area. The models can play important roles in the analysis of variations in the relative importance of oceanic and terrestrial sources of precipitation."

This event will be offered in-person in EIT 1015 and online via Zoom. Please register.

Employers hosting Virtual Employer Information Sessions (VEIS) next week include Formlabs. Make sure to register through WaterlooWorks and check the calendar for any updates.