UNews - laser

RSS change a positive move

trevor.kenney — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 19:07:47 +0000

They say with change there is growth, and with growth there is opportunity.

The recent amalgamation of Risk and Safety Services (RSS) with Security Services elicits some exciting changes as RSS grows its portfolio.

As part of the changes, RSS is pleased to welcome Lorna Selinger, who is assuming the position of Biosafety Officer. Selinger graduated from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Saskatchewan with a bachelor of science degree in agriculture. She started her career with Eli Lilly and has held positions with the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Saskatchewan, the province of Saskatchewan, Agrium and most recently with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

Selinger brings to the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ a wealth of knowledge and significant experience in microbiology. She was highly involved in the design, implementation and training plans for compliance with containment Level 2/2+standards outlined in Containment, Biosafety and Biosecurity Guidelines as required by the Public Health Agency of Canada.

As the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ's academic and research programs have expanded, the need to grow the biosafety program became evident. Selinger will be taking over the portfolio from Bruce McMullen, who diligently managed biosafety for the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ since the early 1990s.

RSS also announced that Carolin Cattoi-Demkiw, who has successfully managed the radiation safety, chemical safety and laboratory safety program for the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge since 2005, has been appointed Manager, Safety. Reporting to the director of Risk and Safety Services, Carolin is responsible for the supervision of the safety officers. She also assumes the management and oversight of the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ's safety program, which includes occupational health & safety, radiation, laser, chemical and laboratory safety as well as biosafety.

Looking out to see in

trevor.kenney — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:40:59 +0000

As the lead Canadian researcher for the Canadian Space Agency's contribution to the Herschel Space Observatory, U of L scholar Dr. David Naylor (Physics and Astronomy) has played a key role in the development of the Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver (SPIRE). SPIRE is one of three instruments on the Herschel spacecraft that is orbiting 1.5 million km from the earth. Functioning at a chilly -270C, SPIRE observes the universe at very long wavelengths, those well beyond the limit of human vision. Radiation emitted at these wavelengths is able to travel relatively unimpeded through even the densest regions of space, which allows astronomers to view back in time to the formation of the first galaxies. This technology is similar to, but far more sophisticated than, the full body scanners now being installed at airports.

Naylor's group designs and builds exquisitely sensitive systems to convert the energy in long wavelength photons into meaningful information on the composition and physical conditions of the astronomical objects under study.

As Naylor explains, "That's what physicists do – they think of the question and then build the equipment to answer that question."

Naylor is also a co-founder of the Institute for Space Imaging Science (ISIS) and director of its Space Astronomy Division. ISIS is a collaboration between the Universities of Athabasca, Calgary and Lethbridge. Scientists from the three institutions, and their research partners worldwide, share technology and other resources to tackle leading edge questions in space imaging.

Most recently, Naylor is collaborating with Dr. Jeff Dunn, a Canada Research Chair of radiology and biophysics in the U of C's Faculty of Medicine, to explore the utility of his detection system to the medical field, initially in cancer detection. In a recent paper, a team of Taiwanese scientists have shown that THz imaging is capable of detecting breast cancer without the lengthy time requirement for histological staining of samples and visual inspection by a technician.

Naylor quickly realized that even his run of the mill detectors are 100,000 times more sensitive, which means they have the potential to identify not only the cancerous cells, but also their boundaries, substantially faster. Dunn and Naylor are working to explore if this gain can be realized.

Some people question why anyone would study astronomy. Can research into the world around us help advance us as a species? Naylor emphatically says yes.

The universe is the astronomer's laboratory, and the instrumentation Naylor has developed to look outward may just provide us a better way to see in.

"One only has to look at the impact of the laser and MRI on society, whose roots lie in basic physics research, to answer the relevance question."

Building a real-time digital reliquary

trevor.kenney — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:00:58 +0000

Written in Old English by an anonymous poet, The Dream of the Rood is recognized as one of the oldest poems in the English language and among the most beautiful religious works. What many don't know is that much of the poem is carved in runes (ancient symbols) on a 17-ft high stone cross in a Scottish church.

The 8th century Ruthwell Cross is historically linked to two other crosses: the 11th century Brussels Cross, made of oak and thought in the Middle Ages to contain a relic of the "True Cross" from Christ's crucifixion, and the 8th century Bewcastle Cross in England, which is carved of stone. All three bear elements that are thematically related to The Dream of the Rood poem.

In the past, Anglo-Saxon historians were required to travel to Belgium and Great Britain to study these artifacts in all three dimensions. Despite the gains of modern digital photography, the crosses are difficult to capture photographically because of their condition and inconvenient locations. Additionally, even a very high-resolution image cannot capture subtle details, like the techniques used to carve the cross.

"It's not 100 per cent clear whether or not the poem was carved when the Ruthwell Cross was carved," explains U of L English professor Dr. Daniel O'Donnell. Being able to examine the crosses in all three dimensions is the only way for researchers to assess this and many other questions.

To improve access to the objects, a ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge team is co-ordinating an international effort to create a high-tech alternative. O'Donnell, a medieval literature specialist, is collaborating with U of L professors James Graham (New Media) and Dr. Wendy Osborn (Mathematics and Computing Sciences), computer programmer and U of L graduate Joel Rigby, and researchers from the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Leeds and the Università degli studi di Torino, to create an online environment that will allow researchers to view and interact with the crosses virtually, in real-time and in three dimensions.

"After examining the multitude of available new media technologies used by humanities researchers and wanting to create an innovative online system that would significantly improve the standard of interactivity, visual accuracy and authenticity-of-experience, we settled on developing a proprietary digital information retrieval system that would work in combination with a collection of next-generation video game technologies," Graham explains. "We felt that the third dimension was the next logical direction for hypermedia-based research to go, as it allows users to see and intuitively interact with virtual representations of objects they wish to know more about."

To render the crosses in 3-D, high-tech laser scanners will be used to capture every detail of the historic artifacts. The digital scan files will then be converted from the 3-D x,y,z data into a highly efficient texture files – called normal maps – that will then be applied to the surface of the 3-D cross models.

The Visionary Cross research group is also completing an innovative system that will allow researchers to interface directly with external online databases while navigating within the 3-D game environment. Students and researchers examining the relics within the virtual game environment will be able to directly access specific online database information – and even add to that database – simply by clicking on the relevant location on the 3-D virtual object.

Not surprisingly, the project will need heavy-duty technological infrastructure. That's why Osborn, who is the director of the Southern Alberta Digital Library and an expert in data management, is examining the best ways to store the data involved to make its retrieval efficient.

"We're still working on proof-of-concept, so we don't have huge amounts of data yet, but when we go online and people start to add their own data, it could be terabytes of data that come into this," she explains.

To put this in perspective: 1 terabyte is 1,000 gigabytes (GB), and your personal computer probably has about between 1-5 GB of memory. In addition to the massive volume of information, the project will also involve many different kinds of data, which also presents a tremendous challenge, Osborn says.

The Visionary Cross Project is being funded by a two-year, $23,000 grant that Graham, O'Donnell and Osborn received from the U of L Community of Research Excellence Development Opportunities (CREDO) program. The researchers have also applied to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) for funding for the next stages of the project.

While the Visionary Cross Project may seem like a radical diversion from most humanities research, O'Donnell explains that humanities researchers have relied on computers since the middle of the 20th century for things like statistical analysis and library cataloguing. But humanities researchers haven't just been the benefactors of technology – they've also created it.

"For example, an awful lot of what allows XML to work essentially comes out of work done in humanities computing," O'Donnell says.

UNews - laser

RSS change a positive move

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Looking out to see in

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Building a real-time digital reliquary

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