Branner Blog

We’ve been posting articles on the bulletin board of our photocopy room for some time now. We hope you’ve enjoyed having news to peruse as you’ve made your copies. In case you want to find something you encountered there, all of the citations for our bulletin board bits will be saved in Branner’s CiteUlike library under the tag “bulletinboard.”

If you have access through Stanford you should be able connect directly to the full text of the articles when available.

If you use CiteULike or would like to join the Branner group, let us know.

Ever wonder what your carbon footprint is and how you can find out? It’s getting easier to do so by the day. Yesterday’s San Jose Mercury News devoted two full pages of their Tech section to helping each of us figure out just how much we contribute to global warming. Included was a simple calculator to assess your impact based on energy usage, driving, and flying. To read the article, go to the Mercury News website and search for carbon footprint.

Numerous carbon calculators are available on the Web including one connected to the Al Gore movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.” PG&E has a much simpler calculator that asks only for energy usage and miles driven. The Nature Conservancy has the most detailed calculator I found. It considers broad categories such as home energy use, driving and flying, food and diet, and recycling and waste.

If these calculators get you thinking about how to live a greener life, check out from the library “How to live a low-carbon life: the individual’s guide to stopping climate change.” It’s on the new book truck this week and then will be on the shelves. Call number: QC879.8 G62 2007.

As the people of central Peru continue to struggle with the after effects (and aftershocks) of this week’s 8.0 earthquake, information is being posted online to keep up with events.

The US Geological Survey has created a number of maps showing the location, intensity, density, and historical quakes in the area. The shake map shown above locates the epicenter of the quake off the coast of Chincha Alta.

The Perry-Castenada Map Collections has posted a number of maps of Peru that are helpful in locating place names mentioned in the news.

CNN.com has created a Hot Topics page on earthquakes. Included are news accounts, videos, and pictures of the Peruvian earthquake as well as others. This page allows you to set up an RSS feed in order to remain current about recent events.

The result of one of your requests, our subscription to the conference proceedings of the International Rainwater Catchment Systems Association is now live.

Stanford readers can access the content through the proceedings page of the IRCSA website.

Non-Stanford readers can browse the conference abstracts.

The International Rainwater Catchment Systems Association grew out of a series of international conferences held in Hawaii 1984, Virgin Islands 1984, Thailand 1987 and the Philippines 1989. Since its formation, the association has run conferences every two years, in Taiwan 1991, Kenya 1993, China 1995, Iran 1997, Brazil 1999, Germany 2001, Mexico 2003 and India 2005. The next conference will be held in Australia this year.

Nature’s new preprint server is up and running at: http://precedings.nature.com/

Background and details.

Coverage to amass on connotea.

Thanks for the tip-off, reader(s).

As of June 4, 2007, the USGS released selected Landsat 7 image data of the United States through the Web (glovis.usgs.gov or earthexplorer.usgs.gov), high quality data with limited cloud cover.

From the USGS news release:

“This Web-enabled distribution of new and recently acquired data is a pilot project for the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM), currently projected for launch in 2011. The project will allow the Landsat data user community to help refine the distribution system planned for the upcoming LDCM. Each scene will be registered to the terrain, or ortho-rectified, prior to being placed on the Web. Copies of these data will also be available on CD or DVD at the cost of reproduction.”

The current issue of Stanford Magazine (May/June 2007) features School of Earth Sciences Dean Pamela Matson, in its lead article. Read about the career and work of an inspiring and influential biogeochemist.

Today is the first day of the Lyell Collection trial period. It runs from today, 5/17 through 6/18.

The collection is offered by the Geological Society of London in commemoration of its 200th anniversary, and includes electronic access to the Journal of the Geological Society, Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology and Hydrogeology, Special Publications, Memoirs, and Engineering Geology Special Publications.

Read more about the collection here.

We welcome feedback and questions from Stanford users regarding the collection.

If you, like me, have been waiting to hear an engineer’s take on April 30th’s MacArthur maze collapse, check out the John A. Blume Distinguished Lecture Series on Friday. Dean Frieder Sieble from UC San Diego’s School of Engineering will give a talk entitled “Protecting our Infrastructure Against Natural and Man-made Hazards.” I assume there will be some talk of the maze.

Details:
May 10, 2007
4:15pm
Bldg. 320, Room 105
Stanford University

If your life doesn’t revolve around the state of Bay Area bridges, follow the links below to read what happened and how it will be fixed:
From the SF Chronicle.

From Caltrans.

Berkeley Civil Engineering Professor will study MacArthur Maze collapse.

a preview of the new blog poster, a take off on the old library “READ” posters.
borrow it, adapt it, or hang it on your wall. enjoy.