On Nov. 29, Engineering alumnae Anne Sado (IndE 7T7) and Dawn Tattle (CivE 8T5) were honoured at a gala celebrating Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women.
Sado, who has been the President of George Brown College since 2004, was honoured in the Cisco Public Sector awards category for her leadership in the growth and renewal of George Brown. She was also recently named the Chair of the board of ORION, an organization supporting Ontario’s advanced research and education network. As well, Sado was given the Engineering Alumni Hall of Distinction Award at this year’s EAA awards ceremony earlier in November.
Tattle, a distinguished leader in the competitive industry of excavations and shoring, was recognized as one of the top 100 most powerful women in Canada in the KPMG Professionals category. Since 1997, she has served as President of Anchor Shoring & Caissons Ltd., and in the process, has had many successes, including increasing the company’s revenues fourfold. Tattle was also the recipient of the 2T5 Mid-Career Award at this year’s Engineering Alumni Association (EAA) Awards.
The Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 Awards is Canada’s most recognizable award for the country’s highest achieving female leaders in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors.
Read more about the honours at the official website, Exchange Magazine, Financial Post and News Wire .
With the Christmas video-game-buying season in full swing, now seems the right time to ask, Are active video games being aimed, at least in part, at the wrong audience? Active video games refer, of course, to games that require you to be active. Often also called exergames, they include the Wii Fit, Dance Dance Revolution from Konami and the new Microsoft Xbox Kinect and Sony PlayStation Move systems, among others. Depending on the game, they exhort players to hop, wriggle, serve and volley, left-hook a virtual boxing opponent or, in some other fashion, move. The underlying premise of these games is that, unlike Madden NFL 11 or Super Street Fighter IV, playing them should improve people’s fitness and health.
But the latest science suggests that that outcome, desirable as it may be, is rarely achieved by most players, particularly the young. In theory, active games should come close to replicating the energy demands and physiological benefits of playing the actual sports they imitate. But as most of us might guess, they don’t. Studies consistently have found that active video games, although they require more energy than simply watching television or playing passive video games, are not nearly as physically demanding as real sports and physical activities. A study published earlier this year in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise found that when adults “exergamed” in a metabolic chamber that precisely measured their energy expenditure, only 22 of the 68 active video games tested resulted in moderately intense exercise, similar to brisk walking. The vast majority were light-intensity activities, which burned few calories and raised heart rates only slightly. None of the games were as vigorous as a run or an actual tennis match, and few lasted long.
The import of these various findings is clear. “At this point, there is little scientific evidence to suggest that exergames can be used alone to meet current guidelines for physical activity in young people,” said Elaine Biddiss (IBBME), Ph.D., an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto and co-author of a review article published this summer in The Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine about children and active video gaming. Exergaming can be an adjunct to other activities, she and other experts say. It can be worthwhile if it replaces time sitting on the couch. But by themselves, active video games do not result in enough energy expenditure to keep children and teenagers fit.
Follow the link to read full article on The New York Times.
EurOmax Resources Limited has announced the appointment of two geologists to its newly formed technical advisory board: Roger Moss and Quinton Hennigh.
Dr. Moss received a Ph.D. in geology from the University of Toronto in 2000, and has been a lecturer in the Lassonde Mineral Engineering Program since 2008. He is a professional geologist with 15 years of international exploration experience, including ten years in senior management positions with Amerigo Resources Ltd., Nikos Explorations Ltd., and Los Andes Copper Ltd. Dr. Moss was instrumental in the discovery of the Navachab gold deposit in Namibia, which after 13 years of operation still contains reserves and resources of 3.7 million gold ounces. He also conducted extensive research on hydrothermal ore deposits.
Dr. Hennigh is an economic geologist with more than 20 years of exploration experience.
“We are very fortunate to have secured the experience and talent of both Roger and Quinton,” said John Nugent, Executive Chairman of EurOmax. “We look forward to their technical contributions as we complete our formal properties review and beyond.”
Click on the link to read the full press release.
CBC Radio’s “Quirks & Quarks” program celebrated its 35th anniversary with a live panel discussion in November, asking engineers and scientists to discuss the greatest achievements since the show first went on the air in October 1975.
To celebrate the occasion, CBC Radio brought together 10 Canadian researchers representing 10 different fields and asked each of them to talk about the extraordinary changes that have occurred in each of their fields. Engineering’s Aimy Bazylak, Assistant Professor of Micro-scale Energy Systems in the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, spoke in the first part of the discussion on the subject of renewable energy.
Follow the link to read the list of panelists and listen to the Quirks & Quarks broadcast of the event.
In late 1960, 26 years before the launch of Wheels, the Toronto Daily Star exhaustively tested the gas mileage of 31 new 1961 cars.
The scope and technical discipline of the project would have been impressive even in a dedicated automotive magazine. In the pages of a daily newspaper, it was astonishing.
The “Gasoline Economy Test” ran in eight consecutive issues, appearing on the front page of Section 2 or 3 alongside Pierre Berton’s daily column. With technical assistance from William A. Wallace, a Mechanical Engineering professor, staff writer Gerry Barker tested cars in seven classes ranging from “little-little” to “high-priced luxury.”
Every car underwent a 16-km simulation of city driving on the grounds of the CNE, and a 32-km highway test that headed from the CNE west on the Gardiner, north on Hwy 27 to Burnhamthorpe Rd., and back.
In case you’re wondering, the miserliest car was the Fiat 600 (44.0 mpg/6.4 L/100 km). The most egregious gas hog was an Oldsmobile 88 propelled by a 394 cubic inch V8 that guzzled go-juice at the rate of 13.5 mpg (20.9 L/100 km). …
Perhaps it’s time for Wheels to haul those vapour-proof gasoline cans out of the basement, dust off the scales accurate to 1/300th of a pound, and run a 50th-anniversary Toronto Star Gasoline Economy Test.
Follow the link to read the full article on the Toronto Star website.
In an effort to promote innovative and sustainable construction solutions, U of T Engineering, along with the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario (MTO) and Holcim (Canada) Inc. recently partnered to perform the first public agency trial of a concrete pavement section using a new class of cement called Portland limestone cement (PLC).
PLC has strong environmental and sustainable construction benefits. The manufacturing of PLC generates significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions and up to 10 per cent fewer carbon dioxide emissions as up to 15 per cent of the clinker used to produce regular Portland cement is replaced by limestone. The concrete produced with PLC is as strong and durable as concrete made with regular Portland cement.
Based on proposals from Holcim Canada, the ministry carried out two trials on existing Central Region contracts utilizing PLC. The first trial used PLC in a cast-in-place concrete barrier wall section, located on the westbound QEW between Brant Street and Burloak Drive.
With the favourable outcome of this trial, a second trial was performed on September 2010 using PLC in slipformed concrete pavement on an exit lane to Hurontario Street of Highway 401 eastbound. Both trials represented the first field applications of the new cement in structural and pavement applications by a public agency in Canada.
The Department of Civil Engineering played an instrumental role in testing this concrete and will be monitoring the trial sections over the next three years to gain valuable insight into field performance.
According to Professor Doug Hooton, who also holds the Industrial Research Chair in Concrete Durability and Sustainability, “The concretes being used by Holcim Canada in this contract had already resulted in approximately a 24-per-cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions relative to plain Portland cement concrete by using GranCem, a slag-based product.
“In this trial section, PLC has been used in combination with GranCem and the carbon dioxide emissions are reduced by 33 per cent compared to plain Portland cement concrete without any anticipated impact on concrete properties or durability. The co-operation with MTO in allowing this important trial shows the ministry’s commitment to adoption of innovative changes to improve green house gas emissions associated with new infrastructure.”
“Although relatively new to Canada, PLC has been used in Europe for over 25 years,” said Paul Ostrander, president and CEO of Holcim Canada. “Holcim Canada’s cement plants in Mississauga, Ont., and Joliette, Que., currently manufacture PLC for trials in Ontario and Quebec. Moving forward, PLC will also qualify for LEED® credits.”
“This is a great example of an industry-academia collaboration that can have significant impacts on the sustainability of our cities,” said Professor Brenda McCabe, Chair of the Department of Civil Engineering. “Just consider the amount of concrete in our infrastructure.”