Are We Alone? — Extraterrestrial Intelligence

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Alcoa Scholarships for Undergrads at University of Virginia

Dear  second and third year SEAS students,

Welcome back to Grounds and the new semester. I am writing to alert you to scholarships available through our Alcoa Campus Partnership Program.

Knowing that engineers play important roles as innovators and leaders in the American and global economy, Alcoa provides two undergraduate scholarships ($3,500 each) to students who have demonstrated the aptitude to become future leaders in engineering.

Alcoa scholarships are available to all second- and third-year SEAS students, but we encourage students majoring in disciplines of special interest to Alcoa—Engineering Science (Material Science Minor), Mechanical Engineering, or Aerospace Engineering—to apply. We urge women and underrepresented minority students as well as students in the Engineering Business Minor to apply for these awards to ensure a diverse and talented engineering workforce. A scholarship committee of SEAS faculty and Alcoa representatives will select the recipients on a merit basis.

The selection for these scholarships will take place early in the fall of 2013, allowing Alcoa to contact the winners to discuss 2014 summer internship positions.

DEADLINE: 4.59 PM, 9 September 2013

TO APPLY

Please provide FOUR COPIES of the following to Vanessa Pace, Department of Engineering & Society, Thornton A237, vpp@virginia.edu.

+ Application form (available from Ms. Pace)

+ 250-word essay discussing how you would use the scholarship to develop as an engineering leader

+ Unofficial transcript

+ Resume

Please contact me if you have any questions about this exciting opportunity.

Sincerely,
WB Carlson
Director, Engineering Business Programs

Email: wc4p@virginia.edu

 ABOUT ALCOA

Alcoa is the world’s leading producer of primary and fabricated aluminum, as well as the world’s largest miner of bauxite and refiner of alumina. In addition to inventing the modern-day aluminum industry, Alcoa innovation has been behind major milestones in the aerospace, automotive, packaging, building and construction, commercial transportation, consumer electronics and industrial markets over the past 125 years. Aluminum is infinitely recyclable and approximately 75 percent of all of the aluminum ever produced since 1888 is still in active use today. Alcoa employs approximately 61,000 people in 30 countries across the world.

 

ALCOA INTERNSHIPS: http://www.alcoa.com/global/en/careers/campus/internships.asp

Library Tour at UVa — and a Free Gift!

This Thursday, August 29^th , in coordination with the folks in the Office of Orientation and New Student Programs, we’re offering our annual Fall Library Tour. We’ll visit Clemons, Alderman and the Small Special Collections libraries and provide a glimpse of 21st-century teaching, learning, research and scholarship. All participants will receive a free Library flashdrive preloaded with a link to the Library Research Portal.

The tour will begin at 3 p.m. in the lobby of Clemons Library. No advance registration is necessary—you can just show up. The tour will last roughly half an hour.

The tour is open to anyone.

_____________________________

Todd Burks
 Reference – Instruction

  Outreach – Accessibility

Clemons Library

University of Virginia

434-924-3162

tcb2e@virginia.edu

 

Data Management Workshops Starting Soon!

 

 

Upcoming Workshops

Data management planning workshops begin next week, and we are now accepting registrations.  Each session is limited in capacity, so please register and mark your calendar now.

Description: What’s your plan for managing all the data from your research? Did you know that all federal agencies with budgets over $100M will soon require data management plans outlining how you will provide access to your research data? What metadata standard will you use? What repository will you deposit your data into? Will your data be restricted or fully open? Join us for a data management planning workshop geared to researchers in your area. We will cover critical components of data management planning to help you get started, introduce you to available resources, and give you an opportunity to develop your own data management plan for a grant. The workshop will conclude with peer and expert feedback on draft data management plans produced during the workshop. We welcome all researchers; faculty, graduate students, and others. Participants will need to bring their laptop computers.

Sessions:
Hands-on Data Management Planning for Engineering
8/27/2013, 1pm-2pm, Bavaro Hall (Room 306, CLIC)
SEE DETAILS AND REGISTER

Hands-on Data Management Planning for Social Sciences
8/28/2013, 10am-11am, Brown Library (Room 148)
SEE DETAILS AND REGISTER

Hands-on Data Management Planning for Life Sciences
8/29/2013, 9am-10am, Chemistry Library Conference Room
SEE DETAILS AND REGISTER

Hands-on Data Management Planning for Physical Sciences
9/4/2013, 10am-11am, Bavaro Hall (Room 306, CLIC)
SEE DETAILS AND REGISTER

Hands-on Data Management Planning for Humanities
9/6/2013, 1pm-2pm, Brown Library (Room 148)
SEE DETAILS AND REGISTER

If you need immediate data management help now, and would like a consultation, please contact us at dmconsult@virginia.edu.

Andrew Sallans
Head, Data Management Consulting Group
als9q@virginia.edu

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Introducing StatLab! — The UVa Library’s Applied Statistical Consulting Service

Need help with data analysis or statistical methods?  Have a question about how to use statistical software?  Wondering what’s the  best statistical method for your research or project?  Get the help you need at the University of Virginia Library‘s StatLab!  StatLab offers individual consultations and FREE workshops.  Learn more at statlab.library.virginia.edu

Welcome Back!

Welcome back to Nuts and Bolts for the Fall 2013 semester!  Hopefully, everyone had a pleasant summer vacation and is now ready to get back to the school routine.  Nuts and Bolts is here to help — my goal is to share with you lots of interesting and useful information about happenings in and around the Charles L. Brown Science and Engineering Library here at the University of Virginia, as well as in the world of science and engineering across the country and around the globe.  Check back often and best wishes for a great semester ahead!

Making Beautiful Maps in ArcGIS (Really?)

Wednesday, October 24
1:00 – 2:00pm
Campbell Hall, Room 105
University of Virginia Grounds

Session repeats on
Thursday, October 25
3:00 – 4:00pm
Alderman Library, Room 421 (New Electronic Classroom)

Most designers can’t wait to export layers out of ArcGIS so beautification can begin.  In this one-hour hands-on session we won’t do that.  Instead, we’ll make a beautiful map using free datasets and ArcGIS tools.  Doubters welcome.

Memory Technology Scaling and Big Data

SPEAKER:                 Hillery Hunter

TOPIC:                       Can We Really Have That Many Bits? Memory Technology Scaling As It Collides With The Big Data Era

DATE:                        Wednesday, October 24

TIME:                         2:00 p.m. (Light refreshments after the seminar – Rice Hall 4^th floor atrium)

PLACE:                      Rice Hall Auditorium (Room 130), University of Virginia

Abstract:  As computer architecture and system design move past the initial phases of the multi-core and virtualization eras, another hurdle is arising: Big Data.  Driven by ubiquitous data generation, from our smart phones and social media postings to security cameras and traffic sensors, Big Data means not just having but also analyzing large amounts of information.  The workloads of this new era will add stress to the main memory system, right around the time that technology scaling encounters new hurdles.  The “End of Scaling” has been declared numerous times — is this time any different?  From the lens of Big Data, this talk will take a look at memory technology scalability, discuss the opportunities of 3D stacking and new memory technologies, highlight key server requirements, and pose important areas for research in the coming era.

Bio: Hillery Hunter is the Systems Memory Strategist and Manager of the Systems Technology and Architecture Department at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY.  Her current work focuses on integrated approaches to solving the memory challenges of future computing systems.

Stair Climbing Wheelchair

Japanese Researchers Develop Robotic Wheelchair That Can Climb Stairs.

Popular Science (10/17, Boyle) reports, “Wheels are the most efficient way to get around, but they can’t take you everywhere.” A “new robotic wheelchair designed in Japan can go almost anywhere, however–it can swivel its axles up and down to climb up stairs, onto curbs or over obstacles.” Popular Science explains, “All the user has to do is move a joystick to point it in the desired direction, and the robo-chair figures out what to do. Sensors on its feet detect the distance to nearby obstacles and determine their size. The chair will stabilize itself in the best position to hoist one of its front wheels, like a rider straddling a horse.”

Reposted from the 10/17/12 ASEE First Bell.

Presidential Research/Scholarship Poster Competition

University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan recognizes the central role of knowledge creation and dissemination in the life of a great comprehensive university.  To recognize research and scholarship as a central part of the UVa mission during the Presidential Inauguration, we held a Pan-University Research Poster Competition to highlight high-impact and innovative growth areas for UVa research.  Due to this event’s popularity with faculty, students, and external visitors, we decided to hold it as an annual event.  The Third Annual Presidential Research/Scholarship Poster competition will be held on May 3, 2013.  Submissions will be due, uploaded to the website, by Monday, March 18, 2013. Please see the website for additional information.

 

Eligibility: Open to all post-docs, graduate, and undergraduate students.

Postdocs: This includes all postdoctoral fellows, research assistants and research associates at UVA

Graduate Students: Includes any student working on a degree of any type that is beyond an undergraduate degree at UVA

Undergraduate: You are currently registered as an undergraduate student at UVA

We strongly encourage faculty involvement, while we are not running a separate track for faculty, we are hopeful many of our faculty will participate through their students and postdocs.  Faculty may be named on posters, but students must be /first author and submit it.

We will select 3 “finalists” in each of the categories. We will have two separate tracks: postdocs/graduate and undergraduate students.

Three finalists in each Postdoc/ Grad & UG category and ultimately one winner for each:

e.g.        Physical & Environmental Sciences- 3 Grad/Post doc finalists -> 1 Graduate/Post doc winner

Physical & Environmental Sciences- 3 Undergraduate finalist -> 1 UG winner

 

Research Award Categories

Physical & Environmental Sciences

Engineering

Biosciences & Health

Humanities, Social, Behavioral, & Economic Sciences

Law, Business, Policy, & Education

Translational & Applied Research

Performing & Fine Arts & Architecture

 

All submissions will be on the VPR website.  After the judging session on Friday, May 3^rd  all the posters will be on view in the Rotunda for the entire week of May 3-12, 2012, so that thousands of visitors can view them.

 

If your poster is chosen as a finalist you must to attend the judging poster session on May 3^rd  and entertain discussion/questions from the “judging committee”. Each presenter will give a 1 min summary of their project to President Sullivan. This session is open to the public and we encourage you to attend even if your poster is not selected as a finalist.  All posters will be featured on the poster website. The previous posters are all available on the website.

 

PRIZES:  $500 travel funds to each winner. These funds will be transferred to a PTAEO in your home department to be spent on travel within the next 12 months. If the winner is graduating or leaving the university they are still eligible to receive the funds as scholarly travel reimbursement/fees.  If the winner does not want to use the funds they may elect to leave the funds for the department to use for scholarly travel of another person.  Funds must be spent or returned to the VPR office by May 31, 2014.

 

Posters due in PDF format by March 18, 2012, uploaded to the website: www.virginia.edu/presidentialposter

 

Finalists will have poster presentations with President Sullivan & prizes awarded on May 3, 2013.