News

And so the Spring Issue of another Wat On Earth rolls around again. Like most other Ontario universities our department has lost faculty and staff due to the cutbacks in the Provincial budget. Waterloo lost 140 faculty and 200 staff to "early retirements" as many senior members decided to head out into the great pasture before something less attractive appears on the horizon. This fall will see us with four less faculty and four less staff members.

David Eden

For my eight-month work term in the Co-op Geological Engineering programme at the University of Waterloo, I was employed by ISS International Limited in South Africa. ISS (originally standing for "Integrated Seismic System") deals in seismic monitoring systems, primarily for use in deep mines. ISS systems are being used in Australia, Canada, Chile, England, Poland, South Africa and Zambia.

Geotimes, September 1995, reprinted with permission.

National Driller's Buyer's Guide, December 1995 (Richard B. Wells.)

Staff, D.A. Johnston Cascades Volcano Observatory U.S. Geological Survey, Vancouver, Washington and Staff, Geophysics Program, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington Reprinted with permission from Washington Geology, Volume 23, No. 4. December 1995.

The ability of living organisms to form minerals is the fundamental tenet of biomineralogy. Among plants and animals, this process involves the production of cystolith inclusions in leaves and hard mineralized body parts like bones, teeth, and shells. This process, biological mineral precipitation, is not exclusive to higher eukaryotic organisms. Prokaryotic microorganisms, or bacteria, are remarkably potent agents of biomineralization, too.

Jim Barker, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Waterloo